California Summer Morning
Upper Bidwell Park, Chico, CA
California Summer Morning: A Tale of Sunlit Adventures
On hot summer days I look forward to hitting the trail before 6am. The Earth is filled with pre sunrise even light, and the birds have started singing. The morning is cool, but being in Chico, that means its high 60’s or low to mid 70’s. Few people are in the park so it’s a great time to connect with nature while getting exercise. Starting out fills me with a feeling of accomplishment. I made the choice to pack the night before, get up early and drive here.
My goal is a 1-2.5-mile hike into a spot with a view where I have my breakfast. Being me, I can easily get distracted if the morning offers me inspiration. (Thus the 1-2.5-mile window!) Most of the time these stops offer me excitement and possibility, but rarely an image I would put time into. The week of this picture, my hikes were all short. Morning clouds had me excited and this view offered a lot of potential. I was determined to get an image with tall, dry grass before it started getting trampled and worn down.
This morning, I went straight to the spot and arrived at basically sunup. I got the camera out and shot from a couple different angles. Pretty quickly I settled on this one. What a moment! With almost no wind the grass was still. Hints of green reveal where star thistle is making its presence known. Dark patches show both the contour of the land and lava cap. Fun clouds diffuse the light and help make the sky interesting with a bit of color and texture. The panoramic crop with 2nd oak tree in the distance completes the feeling of vastness, promising there is more to come over every hill.