Daily Archive

So went the title of an e-mail a man in the church sent me a few days ago, and to my delight it included these photos of a tree he and his wife saw in King’s Canyon National Park, which, he said, reminded them of the patterns in some of the images here.  Beautiful!  Thank you both!

(All photos by Paul Albertus.)

They liked “thinking about what this tree was up to through many cold and snowy Sierra winters and hot and dry Sierra summers to come up with such patterns.”  And that is what I love about things like strata in rock, the patterns the tide leaves on the sand, the marks that remain on agave leaves after the outer leaves have opened, the insect-munched trail on the oak leaf I found at Bass Lake last week:  the way they hint of a history that is mostly unknown to the observer who comes along later.  Each of us bears those signs too, some on our bodies and many more on our personalities.