The Silence of the Pines

by Eric Glaser

Title

The Silence of the Pines

Artist

Eric Glaser

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photography

Description

"The Silence of the Pines"

From Bear Lake Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, the trail to Bierstadt Lake climbs some six hundred feet up and over a thickly wooded moraine-top, and then gently descends to the lake. Named for Albert Bierstadt, the German-American landscape painter, the lake is lovely, to be sure, with great views of the peaks of the Continental Divide just a few miles to the west.

But my favorite part of the trail is this beautiful pure stand of lodgepole pines at the very top. Standing oh-so-tall and impossibly straight, and living large at an elevation of 9400 feet, such trees are unmistakably the dark and silent type, and no small force to be reckoned with. Sometimes called "black pines," they are strong and straight and tried and true, and it's no wonder their wood has been prized for centuries for all manner of building and other wood products. Native Americans used the straight and slender poles of the trees to support their lodges.

But it's not easy to walk among them. In this stand, they are spaced so close together - in a condition popularly known as a "dog-hair stand" - as to make them nearly impenetrable. And with their low spiny branches and immutable solidarity, they are difficult to approach and even harder to get to know.

I do know this. In their deep and eternal silence - on this particular October morning, a silence hushed even more by an immaculate blanket of fresh snow deposited the night before - these silent sentinels can say so much. At their core, from the depths of their very roots to their crowns high above, they speak of strength, and grace, and beauty, and peace - evergreen qualities and higher states of being that are too often missing in the human world.

It reminded me once again that there is still plenty of beauty left in this world. All one need do is look.

And "listen."

Image Capture: October 11, 2018

Note: I processed this image to show how the scene "felt" to me as I experienced it rather than simply how my eyes saw it. Far more spooky than enchanting, this forest of unrelenting stillness and stunning visual contrasts created a landscape of uncommon power.

Bierstadt Moraine
Rocky Mountain National Park
Colorado
United States

The image was made using a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV digital body, a Zeiss Milvus 35mm f/1.4 ZE lens, at f/7.1 for 1/125 second at 100 ISO.

The raw image file was processed using Adobe Lightroom and Nik Color Efex Pro 4.

Copyright © Eric Glaser. All Rights Reserved.

Uploaded

November 4th, 2018

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