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October12, 2005
Flower power revisitedDEATH VALLEY BLOOM INSPIRES SEARCH FOR PERFECT BLOSSOM
By ROBIN FLINCHUM
Now, while summer turns to fall, even the memories begin to fade for most who viewed the phenomenal bloom. But for devoted flower fans, the memory of a long and particularly lush season is alive and well. The profusion of wildflowers in Death Valley from February through July this year drew record numbers of visitors to Death Valley National Park, doubling and even tripling visitation during peak periods. For most casual visitors, viewing the bloom involved a drive past the fields of Desert Gold along the Badwater Road or perhaps a trip to the Wildrose Charcoal kilns. Some got out and walked among the bright colored buds, some breathed deep to remember the scent of them. Most snapped photographs. But for true enthusiasts like engineers Rich and CJ Lewis and photographer and editor Lara Hartley, viewing the flowers in Death Valley meant crawling around on hands and knees in remote park locations searching for one tiny, rare bloom. It meant packing their gear into the backcountry, driving rutty, rained out roads, and making do in some of the wettest weather Death Valley has seen in years. The adventure also meant purchasing newer, better equipment to capture the bloom just right and, for the Lewises, purchasing a new Jeep Rubicon they dubbed the Flower Acquisition Vehicle. For Hartley, a long-time desert dweller from Barstow, Calif., who works as an editor and photographer for the Victor Valley Daily Press, the search for the perfect wildflower photo has been an enduring passion for years. Her hunting grounds exceed the boundaries of Death Valley National Park, extending as far as Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and areas around San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Mount Pinos, as well as her own backyard. Hartley said she truly became hooked on desert wildflowers after the profuse bloom following an El Nino winter in 1998. That bloom, Hartley maintains, outshone this year's more publicized one, but back then she had yet to become committed to shooting as many wildflower species as she could find. "Some called it a compulsion," Hartley said. "I started working really hard at wildflowers last year and then this year was very intense." Her diligence in tracking some of the more rare species has sometimes led her on wild goose chases through the desert, but has more often paid off in images of flowers that might not appear again for decades. She plans to publish these images in book form when the time comes that she feels she has truly captured all the elusive species hiding in the desert. For most true enthusiasts, the compulsion to find and photograph wildflowers may lead them to related projects such as Hartley's book, but these projects are driven first by a fascination with the flowers themselves. "It seems to me that flowers have this inner world that is unseen by most people," Hartley explained. "The smallest and commonest flowers that go mostly ignored have intricate, intimate lives where tiny things live and die. And those flowers are just as stunning in their hidden worlds as the more showy ones." Aerospace engineers Rich and Claudia 'CJ' Lewis from El Segundo, Calif., whose wildflower fascination really took root with this year's bloom, said they were attracted both by the fleeting lifespan and the enduring legacy of the flowers. Rich Lewis, a former Pahrump resident, had been familiar with the desert and loved the flowers for years, but had never been quite so drawn to it as he was in 2005. For him, it was the idea of bearing witness to something so rare. "The flowers you see today may be gone tomorrow and may not emerge again for many, many seasons. The more wildflowers I saw, the more I was drawn back to them with a dramatic sense of urgency." And the only way to capture that was to put it on film. The Lewises made several trips into Death Valley this year scouting for flowers. On one occasion Rich Lewis, traveling alone, made an 18-hour-round-trip from Southern California into the Panamints and Wildrose Canyon. "I was physically moved to tears by the beauty of what I experienced that day," he said. "I was blessed to have located many rare and exotic wildflowers such as the Mojave Monkeyflower, Lilac Sunbonnets, Desert Candles, Prickly Poppy, and the giant Panamint Daisies all in the same day. There were wildflowers in bloom as far as the eye could see. The sweet smell of the blooming wildflowers was amazing. I'll never forget that run." Hartley and the Lewises found themselves upgrading their camera equipment as their pursuit intensified. For Hartley, a professional photographer, equipment upgrades are a matter of course, but the sometimes-tiny flowers require their own special lenses and merited a new tripod this year. The expense was small compared to the returns, Hartley said. "There is a great deal of peace in my life when I am photographing wildflowers," Hartley said. "All is right with my world because I feel I have been given the gift of seeing them and the gift of capturing them in a unique way. Sometimes I am just shooting for botanical examples but many other times something moves me to create an image that pays homage to the beauty of the bloom." CJ Lewis, originally from the East Coast, said she never really appreciated the desert until she began crawling about on her knees looking at the blooms it had to offer. She was captivated by "the experience of actually seeing tiny little flowers like Desert Stars that I would otherwise have trampled on ...They were so unfamiliar to me, I had to buy all the books in order to know all the names of these wildflowers." And as she learned, some became her favorites. "I find it hard to beat a perfectly formed Globe Mallow blossom or a well-focused image of a Desert Five Spot with an interesting insect hiding in its petals," Lewis said. For Hartley, each well-poised flower is the beginning of a new, if brief love affair. "Every flower is my favorite when I'm shooting it," she said. "It's like being in love, you always love the one you're with." Hartley said she feels much the same way about where she finds her flowers. "I'm not sure I have a favorite location, every location is my favorite at the moment I'm there if I'm finding flowers. If I'm not, then it's a lousy place." Hartley's wildflower photos appear online now as a regular photography lesson feature of the Daily Press at www.vvdailypress.com. She also contributes images to a botanical Web site operated by the University of California, and sells her images independently. The flowers also appear on calendars and cards Hartley produces. For the Lewises, a desire to share the results of their flower-seeking missions this year resulted in a Web site displaying the large variety of colorful and sometimes rare images captured during this year's bloom in Death Valley and other desert locales. The site is still under construction, but will be located at www.westernwildflowers.com. Meanwhile, both Hartley and the Lewises have posted images, and shared wildflower location tips and tricks on an Internet discussion board at www.Death-Valley.us, where other enthusiasts also chime in on discussions about flower identification, location, shooting techniques and timing. While they continue to pore over the images gathered from this year's spectacular bloom and organize their fast growing catalogs of photographs, Hartley and the Lewises also have eyes on the future and the coming wildflower season. Every drop of rain that falls on the desert during the winter months promises a better and better bloom. If the conditions are right Hartley plans to continue her relentless pursuit of a rare Death Valley bloom called a monkeyflower. But whatever the weather, she'll be out among what flowers appear as soon as they begin to show their colorful faces. "Having a project, or several about wildflowers going, gives me great reasons and places to go with a purpose instead of aimless wandering." The Lewises have the Flower Acquisition Vehicle primed and "ready to roll," Rich Lewis said, while CJ Lewis's stack of wildflower books are carefully marked as to which as-yet unseen blooms they'll track this year. Meanwhile, flower fans are keeping their fingers crossed for the well-timed, just-right rains that will coax those rare buds from the rough desert ground. |
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