NANPA President Beth Huning in “sunny?” California.
By Beth Huning, NANPA President
One week to the day after the spring equinox, I sit at my desk in my rural California home watching the snow fall, the third snowstorm in the past month. Snow is unusual in the hills above the Napa Valley, let alone multiple snowstorms, one of which dumped a foot of snow that lasted for almost a week. While it may be normal for NANPA members who live in areas of more dramatic seasonal changes to be trapped indoors for several months, we California photographers are used to being outdoors much of the year. How many photo trips did I plan the past few weeks and cancel until the weather forecast was more favorable and roads that were flooded or covered in snow become safe for travel? As I gaze out my office window at the fresh snowfall, I can’t help but let my mind wander and ruminate about all the immediate changes on our landscape.
Two and a half years ago the hillsides were ablaze in firestorms, exacerbated by ten years of drought and one hundred fifty years of fire suppression. Nestled in an oak woodland/mixed conifer forest where the Coast Ranges and Central Valley vegetation create an overlapping ecotone, my house was surrounded by flames consuming tinder-dry vegetation. Thankfully my home and those of my immediate neighbors survived, but the beautiful, lush, and overgrown forest, a signature of the beautiful Napa Valley, is now permanently altered. If this was nature’s way of thinning the forest, it wiped out entire tracts of conifers, some of which were exceedingly dry due to not only lack of water but stressed by bark beetle damage. Since a number of these fires were caused by neglected utility lines, our utility company went on a rampage to cull many remaining trees. The once lush hillsides, looked like a bomb had hit until this year with all the rain. California fire-adapted vegetation is again sprouting and turning the blackened hillsides green again. But sadly, the surviving forest of mixed pines, firs, and oaks right out my window quickly evolved to mostly oaks and invasive French broom with the reduction of shade as the forest canopy became open. A more open forest is more natural, but the loss of diversity is not.
California gets most of its precipitation between November and March as rain in lower elevations and snowpack in the Sierra, but this cyclical swing between drought and flood is anything but normal. We are grateful that the unprecedented rain and Sierra snowpack may end the drought, but little did we expect what feels to be a never-ending winter. Many of you have probably seen pictures of the Sierra snowpack at unfathomable depths. Now that dry reservoirs are mostly full, maybe these unprecedented storms will begin the job of recharging ground water tables that are so rapidly being depleted. Earlier today I asked the fire station to post the official precipitation total for the season. By my calculations, we could be hovering at nearly 72 inches; that’s six feet of rain! In the past, storms such as we are experiencing would have flooded the nearby Napa River and inundated the City of Napa, but surprisingly not this winter. The Napa River Flood Control Project, a large floodplain wetland restoration project that I worked on a dozen years ago, has finally been put to the test. The restored floodplain has absorbed and redistributed the water, saving homes and property throughout the Valley in this year of unprecedented rainfall. This proves that well-designed multi-benefit wetland restoration projects benefit both people and wildlife.
As I write this, watching fresh snow accumulate on my roof and in the garden, I’m hearing from NANPA friends on the East Coast that they have had very little snow this year. Just today another NANPA member in the Seattle area let me know that it is sunny and 62 degrees there. Something is out of whack and topsy turvy. Climate change is real, and nothing is as it’s supposed to be anymore.
What does all this ruminating have to do with photography? I have heard from other California NANPA members who are using this extended indoor time to clean up files, sort and delete images, learn new skills, and process a backlog of images. This indoor time is providing photographers with “new” work from the desktop. Others are planning and promoting new workshops. As for me, I have had the time to focus on NANPA business without having to choose between my commitments to NANPA or being out in the field photographing. I have finally gotten around to upgrading my computers, systems, and am redoing my back-up system with newer and faster drives.
Now that spring has not yet sprung, the calendar tells us that it’s time to be outside with our cameras. When the early rains came, there were rumors of a “super bloom” all over California. Because I work seasonally in Death Valley National Park, I have received a lot of inquiries about when and where the flowers will bloom there, a question I can no longer answer as trends no longer apply. I grew up near the foothills of the Temblor Range, the eastern flank of the Carrizo Plain, a once hidden secret now a national monument and a major destination for wildflower viewing and photography at risk of being trampled by the masses with each news article promoting it to as a wildflower destination. Because of these late rains and snow, it’s anyone’s guess whether a “super bloom” will materialize there or in other traditional locations. Maybe the seedbed has been washed away in the storms, or maybe it’s just too cold with rain too late in the season. Or maybe we can expect a late bloom. There will be wildflowers, but whether there will be a “super bloom” is anyone’s guess.
Instead of photographing wildflowers, I watch the snow fall, dreaming of whimsical travel destinations and making travel plans for destinations near and far, including my trip to the NANPA Summit. I’ll be departing California at this time next month, hopefully following clear and safe roads, photographing along the way. Maybe I’ll run into some of you as I pass through Death Valley, and I certainly hope to see many of you at the Summit. When not daydreaming of exotic destinations, sometimes I brave the deluge, bundle up like someone in the arctic, and subject myself to the elements in search of that unusual capture out in the wetlands I worked to protect and restore.
I am also recognizing other photographic opportunities in this climate-related turmoil, from documenting impacts of weather fluctuations on plants and wildlife to long term changes in the landscape such as what I have been witnessing. How I wish I had been more diligent about documenting the everyday landscapes or even taken the time during the firestorms to snap a few images while I was evacuating. How I wish I had more comprehensively photographed the changes before my eyes in my forest, a place that now feels like “Climate Change Central”. Isn’t evolution supposed to happen over time? I had no idea that the forest would evolve within a matter of months so didn’t think to make documenting it a project. I did capture images of the snowpack a month ago, mostly because it was unusual, pretty, and might produce a good photo card. You can bet that once the deluge lets up, I’ll be capturing images of the forest where remaining unburned and uncut trees buckled like pick-up sticks under the weight of the unprecedented snowpack as well as the young, fresh vegetation sprouting from the ashes.
These are just some of the thoughts rumbling around in my head each day as I wonder, marvel, question, and express concern about how rapidly nature is changing. My lesson in this unusual winter and spring is to recognize that these are times of accelerated evolution. I need to remember to document what is “normal” and photograph it again and again. Things may seem normal until suddenly they are not.
The NANPA Summit is happening May 4-7 at the beautiful La Paloma in Tucson, AZ. There is still space and time to register at https://nanpa.org/eventcalendar/2023-nature-photography-summit/
