My last post was about my failed attempt to reach Grand Park to photograph the wildflowers in the meadows of Mount Rainier National Park. Not deterred, I decided to rest for a day and return on Sunday morning. Mount Rainier implemented a new timed reservation system with limits on entry between 7 am and 3 pm. This works great for landscape photographers like me, as I want to be there as the sun rises or sets. I left my house at 3 am for the 2 1/2 hour drive: this time, my destination was a much more accessible location, the alpine meadows around Paradise. Paradise lies on the park’s southwest corner, and the meadow starts just at the parking lot. John Muir, the naturalist, described Paradise as “…the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings.” It certainly lived up to its glory on my visit.
The vistas were overwhelming, and while I have a few photos of those, the smaller scenes caught my attention. The oxeye daisy, pink mountain heather, magenta paintbrush, lupine, and others were all in bloom. I spent several hours photographing the flowers, still covered with dew, protected from the rising sun by the surrounding mountain outcroppings. It was a glorious morning, one as I spent more and more time with the flowers, the more in awe I was about their ability to grow and reproduce with so little: the growing season is measured in weeks, the soil depth is measured in inches, the soil is often dry during the growing season. But as normal, nature finds a way.
