Silver and Gold

I’ll never forget this image. It was late fall and we were looking for a stand of aspens to capture. These particular aspens were located at about 10,000 feet elevation. Before we got here, though, we had driven our vehicle up a dirt road to about 12,000 feet. The higher we went, the more snow we saw. Eventually, our dirt road gave way to mud, which was caused by the snow that had recently melted. Driving back down the mountain was sketchy to say the least. Our vehicle struggled to gain traction and we kept slipping toward to edge of the cliff — which just happened to be on the passenger’s side (where I was). At one point, I opened the door and almost jumped out, thinking that our vehicle was going to fall off the cliff. Ultimately, we made it back down the hill — to this location — but it wasn’t without a few scares here and there. These aspens, meanwhile, are part of Pando, a clonal grove of quaking aspen trees in the Fishlake National Forest (central Utah). Pando is considered one of the largest living organisms on Earth.