These photographs were taken in Wawona, just inside the south entrance to Yosemite National Park.
April is warm this year. Mornings in the 30’s, daytime temperatures sometimes reaching the 70’s. A few days ago it snowed, though all traces are gone.
I think of the Summer King and the Winter King in Celtic folklore. Their battle for ascendency never ends. The King of Summer is winning now, but they’ll meet again in autumn.
The sun is so bright and the shadows so deep they stop you. Their interweaving patterns, stirring in the breeze, shift from moment to moment.
The world changes before our eyes. Always the same and never the same.
The First Gates 
Yosemite is one of my favorite places on the planet. So lucky to have it in my backyard.
Lovely photos!
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I’m with you 100% on Yosemite. Thanks for taking a look a the photos!
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Evocative post, thanks. Woods are that archetypal environment where magical things happen or danger menaces, as in those Grimm-ish Teutonic forests. You can certainly indulge your fantasies or daydreams in them, wherever in the world your woods are.
I’m in a part of the world, Pembrokeshire in Wales, which was anciently part of an area called Dyfed (roughly pronounced “Duh-ved”), and where many of the Welsh Mabinogion tales were set. South of us is Narberth, which might have been where Pwyll, seated on a magic mound, first saw his supernatural wife Rhiannon. North of us is Cwm Cych, where Pwyll first met the King of the Otherworld, Arawn. Or, as you rightly put it, where the battle for ascendency of the Summer King and the Winter King in Celtic folklore never ends.
Just a mile or so north of us as the raven flies is the site of a famous battle between Arthur and his men against a giant boar, Twrch Trwyth, resulting in a blood bath in Cwm Cerwyn, a large bowl-shaped depression just below the 500-metre peak. Lots of landscape features are traditionally associated with these primitive Arthurian tales here. it’s magical to live somewhere where the legends cluster so thickly, like trees in a forest.
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I will never forget a trip that took us to south Wales 20 years ago. We got to see a stand of old forest, now protected, and I could really see with woods so dense covering the land, how mystery tales would center there.
These woods, at 4000′, are oak, pine, and birch, and not nearly so thick. It makes me think of the mountain men, anglos who set off into the early 19th century American wilderness to live as solitary trappers, risking grisly bears and sometimes hostile Indian tribes in order to be left alone. I always enjoyed Jerimiah Johnson, 1972, a Robert Redford film, now somewhat dated, that gives an idea of some of the dangers as well as the yearnings that sent these men into the wilderness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFLwH-ZZ1MY
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The film’s title isn’t familiar to me, but I’ll look at your link, thanks. Wilderness always creates myths, it seems to me!
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Beautiful photos. Wish I were there.
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It’s like spring right now – unusual for April. We came up around this time last year and had snow.
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Very nice….the shadows and the light creating new images when they intertwine.
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Thanks. Yes, and the light changes moment to moment. Very fleeting.
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