For its elements

I like this photograph, not because it’s a great photograph but because of the elements of the natural process that it contains.

The tree trunks are black from the fire in 2002 which killed about 50,000 acres of the forest which is sad, but:

• New green pines can be seen which in due time will replace the dead ones and the clump of willows provides cover and food for the animals.
• The blow-downs in the foreground will decompose and return nutriments to the soil.
• The standing dead trees for several years now have been providing a renewable and economical energy source for many of us to use in heating our homes.
• The traces of red are the fall color of huckleberry bushes which took advantage of the openings to the sky and are now growing where they could not grow before.
• In the burned areas after a fire, the low growing grasses and shrubs provide excellent food for wildlife, and these four Mule deer are typical of those who use it to their advantage.
• The bare, tan-colored stalks in the foreground are the stalks of bear grass which have provided beautiful summer blossoms in the burn area ever since the first summer after the fire.

Nature is quietly doing what She does so well.

(This setting is at an altitude of about 6,000 feet in the burn area of the Siegel Creek fire of 2002. It is in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains of western Montana.)