I have long wanted to visit the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest at night. The idea of photographing the oldest living things on Earth (many of the trees are over 4,000 years old) in front of the oldest light that can be seen (the Milky Way) seemed to me a good way to get perspective on my life. I planned the trip to coincide with the Perseid meteor shower and the dark of the new moon in August. The trip far exceeded my expectations. I was a little nervous about being on the side of a mountain at 10,000 feet elevation, five miles from the nearest people the first night, but soon became comfortable with the deep silence and beauty of the night sky above Shulman Grove. The next day, I drove the 12 mile dirt road to the Patriarch Grove at 11,000 feet elevation. The last image on this page shows my white van parked at the Patriarch Grove. You can see how isolated and barren (other than the trees) that place is. I was not worried about bears or mountain lions as there was almost no visible life up there. I didn't see so much as a a squirrel or more than one or two birds all day. Other than one fly, I didn't even see any bugs. It was so quiet, it was almost unearthly.
The magic started at dusk, when I saw a faint line of wispy cloud and realized it was the Milky Way. I quickly set up my camera and caught that (the second image on this page), then got out a lantern to front light the tree, resulting in the first image. Hope you enjoy!