A black and white photograph of a glowing Bracken Fern reaching toward a bright sun, framed by silhouettes of evergreen trees.
A black and white photograph of a fallen dead evergreen tree fills the center of the shot. It’s skeletal limbs are akimbo, off to all sides.
A black and white photograph of a dead tree with a maze of bark beetle tunnels eaten away, likely being the cause of death for the tree. The rise of bark beetle populations is due to climate change.
A black and white photograph of a mountain lake surrounded by evergreen forest. At the water’s edge lies a boulder and rising up from it sandy shores are carved in scalloped steps from lowering the dammed lake incrementally.
A black and white photograph of a decaying stump that fills the lower half of the frame. It is cleanly cut on the top, and above it is the lake and mountains rising in the background.
A black and white photograph from above of the rings and rugged edges of a newly revealed decaying tree stump, which meets sand on one side and water on the other.
A closeup black and white photograph of layers of bark and wood peeling apart, with grains of granite sand between, from time spent underwater.
A black and white photograph of a lake with mountains in the background and the sun shining through a silhouetted Jeffrey pine tree on the right side. Below the tree, the arc of the shoreline is cut into sandy steps from lowering the lake incrementally through the dam.
A black and white photograph divided into two by a carved sandy shoreline with boulders. Above, the sun shines through evergreen forest, brilliantly reflected in a dappled pattern off the dark water below.
Emptying. Filling. Emptying.
Filling. Emptying.
A new kind of tide,
grinding sand from granite,
carving lines into shore,
uncovering remnants
of the ones who came
before us,
and a vast emptiness
that is home to them
no more.
Huntington Lake, along with Edison and Florence lakes, in the central Sierra were dammed in the early 1900’s to supply energy to Los Angeles. The lake is seven miles long and fills 88,834 acre feet of the former valley.
About photo descriptions: I have included photo descriptions so that this content is accessible to people with various abilities. These descriptions may also offer viewers greater information as to what it is you are seeing in the photograph. If you have any comments or feedback on these descriptions and how they could offer more assistance, please contact me.
bonnie veblen 