There’s something about the Sierras.

Maybe it’s the way the desert meets the mountains.

Maybe it’s the way that barren, hostile landscape… that world so inhospitable to life… that world of tough, sturdy, spiny creatures that seem to scream, “Don’t touch me!”

Maybe it’s the way that landscape dissolves and becomes the lush, rugged, formidable world of the Sierras.

Golden, rippling sand dunes evolve into shrubby alpine tundra. Icy cold streams slither into parched land and create verdant oases of thick grasses, pastel flowers, and pine forests.

Roaring waterfalls – surging with water from the harsh winter of preceding days – pour over cliffs into alpine lakes. The lakes, teeming with fish and algae, seem to sparkle indigo, emerald, and turquoise in the sunlight.

But it’s the mountains themselves that make this slice of earth remarkable. They rise out of the earth craggy and raw, cutting a jagged gash across the skyline. They hold fast to the icy tendrils of winter well into summer, slowly drenching the valley below with snowmelt.

The mountains rein here. They create the weather. They channel the winds, spark freak thunderstorms, supercool vapor in to thick, billowy clouds. It’s here, in the shadow of the Sierras, that Spring can give birth to new life.

These mountains create such a magnificent screen for the light. At dawn, they illuminate with crimson, pink and yellow. At dusk, they fade into deep shades of maroon and purple.

It feels like this wild, transitional space where death slowly makes its way to life. It’s pretty special.