2022-05-20
The story of this trip was the trees. The highlight was a magnificent alligator juniper where the water springs out of the creek bed and then ponds.
Alligator Juniper have a distinctive bark. It generally looks much like an alligator bag. Fires and other challenges damage “Gators.” Often there is a dead grey section which is not covered by the bark. The tree lives on. Branches grow out, die and new arrive.
There are plenty of Gators in the forest when we arrive at camp. It is interspersed with scrub oak and other vegetation that grow happy at 4 to six thousand feet elevation. These trunks are somewhat the same, but upstream, where moister is more abundant more often during the year, or a perennial stream and other species naturally intermix, they all take off with growth. There, we find trees with the character of time, abundance and scars of disruption and survival.
This giant takes us slack jawed in amazement.
The Free Range Naturist 