Photos: The Trees

On my many hikes throughout my life, I have often grabbed pictures of isolated, dead or dying trees. They tell a story about the circle of life, and remind me of the impermanence of it all.

I love to hike. Alas, I haven’t done so much hiking lately, but I spent a bunch of years living in Tucson Arizona, and that is the mecca of hiking. First in and around town are some great trails, but it wasn’t far from the Grand Canyon, and Sedona, some world class sights to see.

On these hikes, I often found free standing trees, often half dead (or further) that caught my eye, and I started consciously snapping these pics.

And now, I am going to share some of my favorites!

The first couple are from a 2010 trip down the Grand Canyon. I am not sure if you have ever tried to get a reservation at the infamous “Phantom Ranch”, but you have to get your reservation a year in advance. And literally, they sell out by 12:02AM a year in advance. In 2009, we got our reservations for the following year.

Exactly 8 weeks before that date, I landed in the hospital with an MI, got my stent, and was staring cardiac rehab in the face … and with our reservations 8 weeks out, I was driven. No fucking way I wasn’t going to get down that mofo.

I will do a full post on the GC, but there were two trees that grabbed my attention. This first one was about a turning point on the South Kaibab trail, and I lifted my Canon 5D and grabbed this. Actually, I took three shots, and combined them in an HDR merge (using three exposures to make it “pop”):

The tree is the star but look at that backdrop.

Later, I grabbed this one, a different framing, that captured my fancy:

You really can’t take a bad picture in the canyon, and frankly almost 180 degrees of just stunning views.

From the northern part of Arizona, we move down south to another tourist-y spot, Sedona. I am not a believer in the crystal energy, and other woo that they sell to the ultra-rich who spa there, Sedona is just stunning¹.

On a Jeep trip I spied this, and got out to take this pic, and it was stunning. The carcass of a lonely tree on the red rocks, with the geology of Sedona in the background.

From Sedona, we head waaaaaaay south to San Filipe Mexico. In 2016, we visited one of my wife’s early bosses who had retired to Baja California, and we spent a leisurely 2 weeks there in April, to just unwind. And of course, I found a couple of trees.

The first one was when we were driving (very gingerly in our 2WD Rav4) part of the Baja 500 race path when I spied this specimen:

Growing out of this crop of rocks, one of the indigenous trees (our host told us what the name was, but I failed to commit that to memory). I just thought they looks wickedly cool.

Edited to add: The familiar name for these are “Elephant Trees”. Subscriber Tina Stephens lives in San Filipe and she tells me that their trunks store water for the dry season. She wants one!

Of course, there are tons of cacti there, and if you know about the skeletal structure of the mighty Saguaro cacti, the frame is a woody frame that is covered in the flesh. When they do die, and the “flesh” rots off, you are left with an intricate wood structure that is striking:

Lastly, in 2016, I was out of work for about 6 months, and during that stretch I hiked every day. I am blessed to live less than 2 miles from Santa Teresa county park, and I would do that back and forth plus 3-4 miles in the park for a total of 7-8 miles a day.

There are several loops in the park, and I have hiked (and mountain biked) ALL of them many times.

One one of the lower side trails, there is a lone husk of a tree that stands alone, a testament to the passing of time. Once, the three was filled with turkey vultures, and it seemed like they were eyeing me as a potential meal.

Yeah, it was a bit unnerving to have so many carrion eaters just glaring at me to die already, my liver looked delish.

I know I have many more, and I will try to find them for a future post, but for now, this is all. Hope you enjoy!

1. If you ever get to Sedona, look up Barlow Jeep rentals, and rent an actual jeep that you can drive on the off-road areas, it is AWESOME and totally worth it.

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