Aspen vs. Fir

I was quite taken with the still bare aspens, especially where they covered complete mountainsides. I think I'd have to spend quite awhile in the area, taking pictures the whole time - or be awfully lucky - to capture whatever quality it was that mesmerized me so. I have noticed that the size of the image definitely makes a difference. The photographs at the still reduced scale uploaded to the blog have less impact than the full scale, full resolution images in my archive. But hopefully, you are clicking on the blog pics to see the somewhat larger images. . . aren't you?

This mountainside is aspen interspersed with fir but, still, the light seems to catch only the vertical trunks of the aspens, ignoring the smaller branches. The firs are altogether different. They seem to be there just to break up the vertical texture of the aspens and provide a little bit of color. The sky, of course, is perfect.

This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip. The balance between the trees in the foreground, left and right; the fallen trees just inside the near edge of the forest; the lone fir interloper on the left; again, the vertical highlights on the mass of aspens in the middle ground; and the line of interspersed aspens and firs at the ridge line. And all under the clear blue Colorado sky.

Here's another of those solitary fir trespassers. Shielded from the daily news and the sorry financial state of the world while on the road, I had time to wonder what the circumstances were here at the foot of this mountain that allowed this single 20' or 30' fir to hold its ground amidst so many deciduous cousins. That it's not a random distribution is clear. But does the fir have to fight for its space or do the aspens freely yield it up to the occasional rebellious fir outlier?

Then, of course, there's the cliff overlooking these deep botanical questions from a geological point of view. We're in the Rockies now and things are different here than they are back in the Smokies of North Carolina and Tennessee. I've often felt it would be nice to travel with a geologist who could explain to me just what I was looking at. . .