On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
We’re traveling all over this week; it should be fun!
If you’ve been thinking of submitting some pictures, now would be a great time to do it. We’re filled up next week, but wide open after that, so this is your chance to have your stuff show up within a week or two.
(click on the schedule below for a bigger, non-blurry version)
Albatrossity
Today’s excursion started back in 2007, with a trip to the Bighorn Medicine Wheel on Medicine Mountain in Wyoming. Elizabeth was researching an essay for her next book, and I was, per usual, along for the ride. We wanted to see the summer solstice sunrise at the site of the Medicine Wheel, so we headed up there in June 2007. Her essay about this experience, entitled “Geochronicity”, appears in Horizon’s Lens: My Time on the Turning World; a shorter version of that essay was also published in Orion in 2008, and is available online. If you want some background about the site and its history, I’d suggest reading the essay before proceeding. Her words illuminate and magnify the experience far better than mine, but I can at least offer some photographs and my own perspective.
Exactly 8 years later we found ourselves in the Bighorns again, enroute to a literary conference in Moscow, Idaho. So this will be a two part experience; today’s and next week’s posts about the 2007 trip, and then several posts about the second visit, as part of a longer road trip travelogue. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed going back through the images, processing them with more modern software tools, and re-living those experiences anew.
As noted in Elizabeth’s essay, we explored the site (accessible via a 1.5 mi trail from a parking area to the 10,000 ft summit), and then camped nearby. It was a lovely streamside campsite, with lots of wildflowers; at this altitude, late June was basically springtime. Thus these first two posts will have lots of flower images and only a few birds. But one of the birds was this Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), the iconic raptor of the West, soaring over the Medicine Wheel when we arrived there. This bird would have been very familiar to the folks who constructed this ceremonial site on the mountaintop. Click here for larger image.
Down at the campsite, I was delighted to find Pussy Willows (Salix discolor), and even more delighted to see that they were still blooming. Click here for larger image.
A handsome male Wilson’s Warbler (Cardellina pusilla) was singing, tail-wagging, and foraging along the streamside. In the contiguous 48 states, this species is a very common resident of riparian thickets in the mountains of the west, but in Flyover Country, we only see a few during spring and fall migration. Click here for larger image.
Another welcome sight, the Western Spring Beauty (Claytonia lanceolata) was first described by Meriweather Lewis, from specimens collected during the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805. Click here for larger image.
The Alpine Shooting Star (Primula tetrandra) is found in wet alpine meadows of the western US, When I first encountered this plant, it was Dodecatheon alpinum. Taxonomists are busy folks… Click here for larger image.
Flowers attract butterflies, and one of the more attractive butterflies is the Milbert’s Tortoiseshell (aka Fire-rimmed Tortoiseshell, Aglais milberti). This is a stunning species that favors higher altitudes and wide-open spaces, and I had looked for it, fruitlessly, on a number of other occasions. It was pretty common in this mountain range, and I was thrilled to finally see one! Click here for larger image.
The next morning, we woke before dawn, got caffeinated, and headed up the mountain to watch the solstice sunrise from this ancient site. There was still snow at this altitude; we slogged through a couple of patches on the way up. Here is a look across the Medicine Wheel toward the spot on the horizon where the sun would rise on this day. One has to wonder how many generations, and how many tribes, viewed this event from this same spot. Click here for larger image.
The Medicine Wheel rocks were adorned with many objects, offerings to various spirits or in honor of someone’s memory. Some were modern (military dog tags) and some were not-so-modern (sage, tobacco). It appears that someone had placed a wing feather from a Golden Eagle in one of the 28 spokes of the “wheel”, and it was gloriously luminous in the dawn light. Click here for larger image.
Greeting the solstice sunrise, looking across the center of the wheel. We were not the only ones up there, but we were all silent and transfixed by this moment. Click here for larger image.
As the sun rose a bit higher, the rocks in the central cairn and in the spokes cast long shadows on the alpine meadow. Click here for larger image.
Trivia Man
Spectacular
The Sun Tunnels in NW Utah are also set up for the solstice, but it is a much more desolate landscape.
Wag
As always, spectacular. Thank you.
EarthWindFire
Beautiful. We used to have annual family reunions in the Bighorns. Dad always insisted that we kids (however many of the many cousins showed up that year) go to the Medicine Wheel and “get some education” while we were there. Thanks for bringing back some happy memories this morning.
OzarkHillbilly
The Big Horns… My home away from home.
SteveinPHX
Wow! Great photos. I’ve never seen a Wilson’s Warbler. Guess I need to get out more.
Thank you for this on a Monday morning.
Princess
The Orion article was excellent— and shows how what you’re doing here, tracking the birds, is not merely beautiful but essential to our survival.
Baud
Very nice.
JoyceCB
Wonderful essay by Elizabeth. As one of her commenters said, I will have to read it again to make sure I get every bit of meaning out of it. And I luuve me some Wilson’s Warblers!
Swiftfox
As an easterner, I was surprised by the number of red-tails I saw in the Great Basin of Utah while working there in the 90s. Certainly the most common large hawk.
cope
This post is an extra special treat, thank you. Your wife writes good.
I’m not sure why but the feather image really resonates with me
pieceofpeace
Terrific morning sunrises and the “Enlargement” option makes it stunning in a bigger way….(duh). Anyway, that feature left me with moments of thoughtless contemplation.
I want to go there.
munira
Beautiful post. I love the feather and the sunrise in particular. And Elizabeth’s article. Thanks
StringOnAStick
The butterfly and the sunset in the next photo below it share so !Such of the same glorious colors!
Albatrossity
@StringOnAStick: Yeah, I LOVE the name Fire-rimmed Tortoise-shell. Very evocative!