Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Someplace Entirely Else

In Santa Fe, seeing friends. Distracted by lost luggage (which finally appeared). Gray skies, grey leafless branches, buildings the color of earth: the palette of winter in El Norte.

Drove up the mountain with PG. It's been very dry, there's not a lot of snow, but at least some of ski runs were open. We tiptoed onto the beginning of the Winsor Trail. Just looking, you know, had no hiking gear, snowshoes, or crosscountry skis. Then we drove back down to the big-view pullout, and ate sandwiches in the car.

The aspen forests are a most wonderful color whose name I don't know, hazy swathes of bright beigy tree-tops. I didn't get a good picture.

Aspens. (Click for larger image.)

Aspens. (Click for larger image.)

We don't have aspens in the Olympics, though according to the range map there is an outlying patch near Victoria on the other side of the Strait. The explanation must lie in glacial history.

Range map for Populus tremuloides (Click for larger image.)

2 comments:

Rocco said...

Source of the aspen range map? Seems like some of these stands must be substantially lower than the 7K' I've understood to be the minimum elevation for their natural occurrence. Near Victoria? Dakotas?

mb said...

http://www.plantmaps.com/nrm/populus-tremuloides-quaking-aspen-native-range-map.php