Saturday, May 14, 2005

The party's over. Time to go home. Today was the last day of picture-taking in my one-month Yosemite Renaissance Artist-in-Residence program. Tomorrow I'll pack my stuff into the Pathfinder, clean up Charlie Cramer's cabin in preparation for the next AiR, and then make that long drive home to Los Angeles.

Sigh.

Although I miss my family, living and working in a natural environment like Yosemite National Park has truly been a dream come true, and it's become one my most memorable experiences.

Today's image collection began with some research about where to go to avoid the spring crowds. I arrived at several possibilies, then drove down to the valley see if they were realistic. I got lucky. Plan number one was to park the truck at El Capitan Meadow on the north loop road and walk east where the road is closed to traffic. Based on what I'd seen so far, the happy masses flowing into the park liked sitting in their cars a lot better than hiking. (That supposition would prove to be correct. Three hours later, when I'd emerge from the woods and cross Swinging Bridge to the south loop road, picnickers would be double-parked in the lot, and bumper-to-bumper traffic virtually gridlocked on the loop road.)

I greeted several rock climbing parties as they hiked out to begin their ascents on El Capitan's timeless face, but they were the only people I saw for the first two hours, and I was able to immerse myself entirely into the surroundings.

Two distinctly different versions of a waterfall caught my attention. First, during the morning walk, I spotted the lower part of Horsetail Fall high on the eastern edge of El Capitan. The tiny stream topples off the top, bounces once on the wall, then vaporizes into a misty freefall that collects on the rock formation shown at the right before cascading off the edges in a series of smaller falls. The second version was the rainbow image of Bridalveil in the late afternoon light.

From fresh leaf buds expanding into new leaves (top) backlit by the early morning sun, to a grouping of the valley's more

« Back  |  Next »

popular monuments (bottom) reflected in a flooded meadow late in the day, Yosemite gave me the opportunity to record images that just don't exist elsewhere.

I'll add a final journal entry after I get home to Studio City, probably after a day's rest. Thanks for sharing the trip with me! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.