Clifford Beshers

  • This little guy is going to be laughing at me all day.

  • Time for a #VisualPuzzle.

  • Peter Sagal reposted an essay he wrote in 2020 about the preamble to the Constitution. Perhaps not surprisingly, he begins with the wisdom of a rabbi.

  • A clear mountain stream in autumn, a few hundred yards from the spring.

    A closeup of a stream bed, with tiny green water plants and fallen leaves on the surface.

  • Standing at the side of Mayfield Canyon, looking down to Wells Meadow, Round Valley and beyond. If you think the camera isn’t level, look at the mountains in the distance in the top left. The land is just that dramatically sloped.

    A hiker stands on a hillside above a large desert valley, with a meadow in fall colors at the base of the hill.

  • An extraordinary endorsement by Harrison Ford, in two videos, one here and another here.

    Simply and elegantly stated. And, of course, impeccably produced.

  • A glade of Locust trees in Wells Meadow.

    An open space beneath trees with pale yellow to light green leaves.

  • We took a hike to Wells Meadow to see the fall colors, which aren’t really prominent in the sagebrush.

    A man in hiking gear stands next to a tree with bright yellow leaves, a huge mountain rock face in the background.

  • Recently, our Great Horned Owls have been visiting every night. Usually, they sit in the trees and hoot, and are nearly impossible to see, but this one decided to sit on my neighbor’s roof when there was just enough light to get this grainy shot.

    Ear tufts for the ages. #birds

    A Great horned owl sits on a rooftop.

  • To wrap up my series on the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, here’s a photo I take every time I visit. This lone tree with this huge view has been a witness to a broad expanse for thousands of years, and continues to stand, even in death.

    A dead Bristlecone pine overlooks a huge view from a mountaintop.

  • A ground squirrel makes his home at the foot of a dead Bristlecone pine, its strength providing shelter perhaps hundreds of years after its demise.

    A ground squirrel sits at the base of a gnarled tree trunk.

    And where there are squirrels, there are hawks. The open landscape must make for a battle as epic as the roadrunner and the coyote. #birds

    A red-tailed hawk sits in sparse sagebrush, stretching its neck to look for prey.

  • The Bristlecone pine likes an alkaline environment at a high altitude. Here, you can see trees of many ages growing on the white dolomite, with little competition from other plants.

    Bristlecone pines grow on a hillside of white rock.

    A closeup of the “soil” favored by the Bristlecone pine.

    Rough, broken white rock, with no dark soil between.

  • Well, look what the NY Times did.

    I’ve been favoring WaPo, but the lack of endorsement hurt. October surprises from the east coast newspapers.

  • White Mountain Road through the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, on the way back from the Patriarch grove, winding through broad valleys, then climbing through narrow gaps on the peaks. @maique I haven’t forgotten the #beautifulRoads challenge.

    A gravel road runs through a high mountain valley of sagebrush, curving up to a pine-covered peak.

  • Time for a visual puzzle. I found these tracks in the snow in the Patriarch Grove, above 11,000’ in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Can you figure out what made the tracks? #visualpuzzle

    A section of snow has a series of small indentations in it.

  • Patriarch Grove, Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, 11,000’ elevation. The temperature was below freezing, the winds were wicked strong (note the jacket). but there was fresh snow with nobody’s footprints but the ones we left behind us.

    A man walks through a mostly barren area towards an ancient Bristlecone pine.

  • Where there is dolomite, there are Bristlecone pines. The rest is sagebrush. Or nothing.

    On a high mountaintop, much of the land is covered in sagebrush, but a section where the ground is dolomite rock is covered by bristlecone pines.

  • A section of the mountain top in Bristlecone National Forest with broken red quartzite, where neither sagebrush nor Bristlecone pine can live.

    A path cuts across a slope of broken, reddish rock with nothing living on it.

  • The trunks of Bristlecone pines are so tortured by their environment that they look sculpted. I don’t know to whom this face belongs, but I don’t want to meet them in a dark alley.

    A dead tree trunk twists and turns so that a knot looks like an eye and a strong jaw descends below, giving the impression of a mythical face.

  • Bristlecone pines can be thousands of years old, but their lives are not easy. They live in alkaline rock, on the tops of high mountains, where even sagebrush can’t survive. The harsh conditions are evidenced in their sculptured trunks.

    A tree trunk has many unusual twists and curls.

  • Yesterday, the power was out all day, so my brother Neil and I played hooky at the Bristlecone National Forest. The power was off because the winds were fierce where I live. They were fiercer at 10,000’ and above, with temps below freezing.

    A Bristlecone pine, seen from below, lit from behind by the sun.

  • Lodgepole pines, no visible green growth, but still standing tall.

    Three dead lodgepole pines, viewed from below.

  • Flakes in the surface of a granite dome.

    A slab of granite has a mottled appearance where patches of the surface of the rock have flaked off.

  • Half Dome, from Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

    A granite dome, cut in half by a glacier, is seen in the distance.

  • Lodgepole pines, dead and alive, framed by the exposed roots of a fallen Sequoia tree. Tuolumne Grove, Yosemite National Park.

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