Forest Escape

Photo Location: Eastern Sierra, California

Rock Creek runs through a canyon in the Eastern Sierra at an elevation where the air already has that particular high-altitude quality — thinner, colder, completely free of everything that accumulates at sea level. The pine forest on either side is dense enough that the light comes through at angles rather than from above, catching the surface of the creek and the weathered planks of the wooden bridge in ways that change completely as the morning moves. This is not a dramatic landscape. It is a quiet one. The kind of place you pull off the highway for and then stay two hours longer than you planned because the combination of moving water and filtered light and the smell of pine at elevation keeps offering something new every time you look.

I set up along the bank where the bridge framed the creek upstream and the canyon walls rose on both sides through the pine forest behind it. The water was running fast from snowmelt — clear and cold over granite cobble, moving with the specific urgency that Eastern Sierra streams have in the weeks before summer takes the edge off the flow. The bridge held its ground the way old wooden structures do in these places: worn, practical, entirely at home in the landscape.

There is a reason people put “escape” in the names of places like this. You arrive from somewhere else and within fifteen minutes the somewhere else stops mattering.

TruLife acrylic-mounted limited edition of 100, signed by me with Certificate of Authenticity. Free US shipping.

Image copyright © Jongas Fine Art Photography.