A SECRET PLACE.......A hidden meadow along a remote back road...at 5300 feet in the Sierra Nevada. Where on the 1st of July each year we can find hundreds of wild Leopard Lilies. But not this year. The normally wet meadow, spring fed, was dry and crisp. Three small lilies hung brown and limp. The victims of our very dry winter. What about the butterflies, bees and birds that make this place their summer home? In all our years of visiting this sacred place we had never seen such a disaster.We looked under the tree root where a Junco always builds a nest. Nothing. We pack all our camera gear back to our car, thru the thick growth of trees which hide this place. We follow down the series of normally wet meadows to where the forest is thick and covers the small almost dry creek. Hiking thru the forest to the creek, with some water now, we find a thick grove of lilies. Some survive! There is hope for the future of our hidden meadow. All we need is rain. Now if we can survive too?

THE SANDHILLS ARE BACK !!!   "What ever happened to Summer"  Shirley asked when the temperature dropped to 35 degrees just north of Truckee yesterday. It was August 2 and we expected it to be in the low '90s later in Auburn where we live. We really thought we had missed a month somewhere when we rolled into Sierra Valley and saw more than 50 Sandhill Cranes feeding and resting in a large brown field along Harriet road. We could not believe our eyes! The Sandhills showed up one month early last year but that was the first part of September. We were really checking on some nesting Cranes in the north end of the valley to see if the parents and perhaps a fledged bird might be seen, like we saw last year about this time. Boy were we off on our timing this year. The marshes were all dry, the Feather River was muddy from cattle and more than a hundred steers were all bunched up in a corral waiting for their last ride to McDonald's. Had we forgotten that there was little water left in the valley after one of the driest winters on record? What about the thunder storm a couple of weeks ago that caused a flood throughout the valley. The water was really gone. We did photograph a pair of Wilson's Snipe, some 1/2 grown Coots, a hawk or two, some just fledged "dicky birds" but the big news was the cranes are back. I wonder if we need new parkas for this winter?

 

THE GRANITE CHIEF WILDERNESS......Whiskey Creek, Big Springs, Diamond Crossing, Mt. Mildred, Needle Peak; we knew them all. By foot, ski and horse over many years we worked, played and loved every foot of this wilderness, and the surrounding area. Now-days we peek in, usually from some high point nearby where we photograph this sacred ground. A thunder-storm this spring brought rain showers to Tinker's Knob. Mt. Anderson on the left is where the Benson Hut was buried so deep in snow, we had to dig to find the smoke-stack many years ago. The winter scene with maybe 30+ feet of snow makes the point.

One of our favorite back country touring areas is in the Texas Hill country south of Emigrant Gap, Placer County. When we have a weather front move in, or thunderstorms forecast, this is the area we most often go for photography because of the clouds in the canyons. One of our favorite spots in the old lookout site at Big Valley Bluff. Here is Shirley shooting into the Royal Gorge of the N.F. of the American River during a thunderstorm this summer.

Last week we hiked up Onion Creek, a remote creek in Placer county that often has interesting wildlife and flowers along it's very high canyon banks. This year it was very dry, few flowers and we saw no wildlife. This creek hike is of a double interest to me. Many years ago I was skiing with a friend at Sugar Bowl ski area, just over the mountain from Onion creek, during a very large snow storm. I last saw my friend get off the ski lift and ski east into the blinding blizzard. He never returned to the bottom of the lift. We searched for a week during the storm and again the next summer. He was never found. I think he may have skied down into Onion creek and become lost. I hike this creek each summer in hopes I would find a ski, a ski boot or some sign of my friend.

WILD PLACES by Jim and Shirley White

This is a web site about the "Wild Places" mostly in the Sierra Nevada visited and photographed by my wife Shirley and myself in the later days of our life. I will post pictures and then tell you about our trip to take that photograph or other information of interest about that area.

This picture of the flanks of Mt. Lassen was taken in late October about four years ago by Shirley when we were the last of a few visitors to Mt. Lassen National Park before the winter storms closed the park for the winter. We had a new pop-up camper on our truck and were trying it out for the first time. We spent one night at Manzanita Lake where it snowed about a foot of new soft snow. We took the road back toward the headquarters photographing as we went. Shirley took this picture near Helen Lake where we saw a man and a small child, dressed in street clothes start up the summit trail. We tried to camp in the parking lot at the park headquarters but high gusts of wind made us think we might lose the camper if we stayed. We moved to a lower elevation camp where we spent a peaceful night.