As a nature photographer and someone with an education in Geology often times I am forced to wonder about the perspective on Time. I was at the Bristlecone Pines groves in the White Mountains in eastern California in July 2018. The area west of this ridge overlooks the Owens Valley and the Sierra Nevada.
My mind was wandering through the boundaries of time. Here in the present we were experiencing among the worst wild fire in California history. The smoke was covering the sky more than I have ever seen before. This is present.
The Bristlecones Pines in this part date back to more than 4000 years, some pre-dating the great Pyramids. These trees are among the few that prefer to grow on Dolomitic bedrock with little topsoil. Now this is a very restrictive requirement and found in very few places on this planet.
The White Mountains especially in the sub-alpine and alpine reaches expose some such dolomites that have aged back to some 570 Million years ago. To top this frame off, we got to witness the Milky Way in all it’s glory on a day when we were submerged in the smoke from the wildfire all day long.
As the night cooled off to low 40 degrees (F), the smoke magically settled to the lower reaches of the Owen Valley. Out came Mars as among the brightest celestial object in the sky and soon after that the Milky Way appeared in among the brightest I have seen it personally. There I was wondering about the time and space confluence in one frame standing under a 13.6 BILLION year phenomena representing the duration of our galaxy within which our little planet had seen only 4.6 Billion years.
The Thousands of years old tree, sitting on hundreds of millions of years old rock, reaching out to our neighboring planet, Mars, around 4.6 Billion years old and eventually reaching over to the 13 Billion year old galaxy, left me with a perspective I have very rarely experienced in the few tens of years that I have been alive. .
Sunny Sra wrote:
Bibek,
This is fantastic. What you wrote is so true...being up there gives a whole different perspective on life and everything else around.
Sunny,
Thanks a lot. Not that I am a religious man, but there are parts of the Hindu philosophy that leads me to these forlorn corners to ruminate :-)
This image is beautiful; however, it is your philosophical commentary that gave this image such impact for me. As if the image was the exclamation point to your musings. Well captured and extremely well written.
Together, your words and image left me pondering time and how fleeting and insignificant my lifespan is (compared to the trees, the earth, our neighboring planet, the Universe) the size of this universe and my own sense of smallness in it.
Some of my favorite posts are the ones that manage to impart an emotional impact on me, and this post has certainly succeeded at that. Well done, Sir!
PS - The juxtaposition of Mars being captured right at the tip of the limb, of the old tree, is magical!
David Israel wrote:
This image is beautiful; however, it is your philosophical commentary that gave this image such impact for me. As if the image was the exclamation point to your musings. Well captured and extremely well written.
Together, your words and image left me pondering time and how fleeting and insignificant my lifespan is (compared to the trees, the earth, our neighboring planet, the Universe) the size of this universe and my own sense of smallness in it.
Some of my favorite posts are the ones that manage to impart an emotional impact on me, and this post has certainly succeeded at that. Well done, Sir!
PS - The juxtaposition of Mars being captured right at the tip of the limb, of the old tree, is magical! ...Show more →
