Fields Spring Strikes Again

My most recent adventure took me to Fields Spring State Park in Asotin County. It's pretty far out of the way, but it's quite lovely. The highlight of the park is the meadows on the top of Puffer Butte and a few other spots, where you can see out to the canyon of the Grand Ronde River. The forests are also pleasant, and you stand a decent chance of seeing wildlife - especially birds or, if you're lucky, something larger. I've seen bear poo along the trail, so I know they're out there. Don't leave any honey lying around! What's more, the park is quiet - there is very little road noise apart from the occasional truck that tumbles along the gravel road; there os no river or stream to make noise; and there are few other hikers, particularly on a Monday. A person can be alone with one's thoughts there - or with the bears!

We'll start with four images into which I tried to incorporate the canyon views. Two challenges faced me in doing so. First, despite the even overcast lighting, the air was quite hazy, making the distant canyon contours hard to discern in some shots. For all of the images in this set, I will need to adjust contrast and other tools in Lightroom to get the distant terrain to render properly

Second, the canyons were a bit more difficult to use as a prominent part of a wildflower composition than, say, mountains. This is because, instead of looking up as one does at mountains, the canyons were visible by looking across and down. The compositional challenge, then, was to get adequately close to the wildflowers without rendering the canyon walls so insignificant that they looked like little piles of dirt. I think these images do all right in that regard. In the first three cases, I used narrow apertures to get the depth of field to cover everything. In the last, I still used a rather narrow setting - f/18 - but still achieved a bit of a selective focus effect to accentuate the lupine flowers.

Now on to some closeups. I found a number of wildflowers that were new to me - Fields Spring is at the edge of the Blue Mountains, and this is not an ecosystem that I've visited before in the spring. In all cases, I used as wide of an aperture as possible - with the exception of the image of sticky currant; I stopped down a bit to f/6.3 for that one because I needed a bit of extra definition in the background flowers.

First, we have something in the daisy or fleabane family - my best guess is that it's thread-leaved daisy (Erigeron filifolius).

Next is sticky geranium (Geranium viscosissimum).

Below is something that I would guess is roughly in the saxifrage family. I found it growing in the forest near the summit.

Next is sticky currant (Ribes viscosissimum).

This one is a mariposa lily (genus Calochortus). My best guess is elegant mariposa lily (Calochortus elegans).

The next two are of old man's whiskers (Geum triflorum). I've photographed these flowers before but I think I like yesterday's images better.

Finally, a forest shot with some blooming serviceberry bushes and ponderosa pine trunks.

It hasn't exactly been a banner year for wildflowers, simply because it's been so snowless and dry this winter and spring. Even so, I found plenty of good stuff at Fields Spring. I'd love to visit the place in a wetter spring, particularly one after a winter with a more healthy snowpack, and see what the meadows look like in that case.

Happy trails!