HIGHS & LOWS IN NATURE

 

Watching an eclipse of the sun looking high through a layer of fog.  This in Alaska in 2017.

Watching an eclipse of the sun looking low to the ground - or in this case, to a deck. 

Giant Sequoias can grow well over 200 feet high.  The “Discovery Tree” in Calaveras Big Trees State Park was 287 feet high before it was cut down.  The “General Sherman” tree, still living in Sequoia National Park, rises 275 feet in height.

This Bonsai Sequoia is a few inches low.

A high-rise Sunflower!

A tiny little flower surviving in a crack of asphalt.

High grass.

Low grass.

Mount Watkins in Yosemite National Park, seen on the left, is 8500 feet high in elevation.  Its reflection on Mirror Lake, which sits at an elevation of 4098 feet, is 4492 feet lower.  This photograph was taken in the 1800s.  “Mirror Lake” no longer exists like this.  The lake was created by dredging out the sand and dirt carried down each winter from the mountains by Tenaya Creek.  The National Park Service decided dredging was not “natural” so the yearly practice was stopped and the lake disappeared.  Now so-called ‘Mirror Lake’ is nothing more than a widening section of Tenaya Creek.  What a shame.  I’m glad I got to see it back in 1956 when it was still a lake and absolutely breathtaking in the early morning just as the sun was rising.

High water.  Upper New Melones Reservoir full to the brim after a good California mountain winter with heavy snow load. 

Low water!  Upper New Melones Reservoir reverting back to the original Stanislaus River after a few drought winters.

There’s actually another high/low connection here although man-made, not natural.  That would be taking this picture from the higher current bridge over the reservoir (the bridge railing can be seen in the photo above), and looking down on the old highway bridge that crossed the river before the reservoir was created.  You can find the old bridge by following the old highway on the right slanting straight down toward the river.  When the reservoir is full, the old bridge is far under water out of sight. 

Downriver a ways from the old bridge is another spot that looks like a crossing of some sort.  It was.  It was the old ferry crossing of the river, the one my Great Grandfather J.K. Smedley used on his way to Yosemite in 1874. J  You can see the old lower road on the left leading down to it.  So much history now under water - most of the time, anyway.

:-> 

La Nightingail