/// Wild Tracks - Landscape Photography by Eduardo Gallo

WILD TRACKS

Passion for Landscape Photography

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Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument, UT, USA

October 2012

Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument, UT, USA

Canon 5D MkII & EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, 1/30s f/16 ISO400 @35mm

Google Earth for this photo
STUBBORN

This solitary specimen of Douglas fir lies on one of the branches of Phipps Wash, a secondary and mostly dry tributary of the Escalante River. I stumbled upon it by chance when exploring the area in late afternoon, after having set up my tent in the vicinity. A storm had blocked me from moving further down canyon, just at the point where the wash narrows down into a canyon, not the place to be when the creeks are flowing. Desert creeks flood in an eye blink when it rains, but they come down just as quickly after it clears. Where a couple of hours before a muddy torrent was rushing through underneath a black sky, there were now a few still water ponds, lots of quicksand, and even some sunlight.

But let's come back to the tree. Douglas firs cover millions of acres in the West, but always further North or higher up, and most of the time both simultaneously. They do not belong here, not in the desert. They abound on the headwaters of the Escalante, a good twenty miles from here as the crow flies and at a much higher elevation. There are certainly no others in the Phipps drainage. So how did this tree end up here? How could it survive so far from its brothers? I can only think of two possibilities.

The first is that this tree is a remnant of another era, a much cooler one. A ghost tree. A corpse without being aware of it. It may be that there were many of them in the area a few thousand years ago, maybe even a few hundred years ago. As the weather warmed and dried up, they retreated and retreated until they could only be found right by the creek, where water is always available underground. This is their last refuge, their last stand within the canyons. But the odds are against them and this stubborn tree is just the last one of a kind.

But there is a second possibility, the one I prefer. In this one, a tiny seed somehow found its way into this place. Blown by the wind, flown by a bird, or somehow transported by an advenurous squirrel. Maybe even swept by water, although I do not think there are any more trees upstream. It arrived after the rains and took hold in the humid ground. Its roots grew fast enough to survive the first droughts by taking moisture from the water table below. Its trunk also shot up tall and strong to withstand the yearly floods, where floodwaters full of debris tried to uproot it and take it downstream. But somehow it survived. It took hold and then it thrived. Stubborn and lucky. A tree that rolled the dice and got two sixes. And now gets to spend its days in its prime real state, solitary but proud.

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