Peak Flows Into Owens Valley Softly, Like a Poet’s Verse

Old and Young Cottonwood, Owens Valley (10/22/18) Gigi de Jong

Pine Creek Canyon, Inyo County (10/22/18) Gigi de Jong

Pine Creek Pass Trailhead, Inyo County (10/22/18) Gigi de Jong

Cottonwood, Owens Valley (10/22/18) Gigi de Jong

“Peak fall color is tumbling down the mountains and spreading out across the Owens Valley,” Bishop color spotter Gigi de Jong describes poetically.

Bishop Canyon is now drained of its Peak color, which she says “seems to be flowing into
the lower creeks and canyons.”

California’s largest and finest display of peaking black cottonwood are at peak in Pine Creek Canyon, “with a beautiful display of yellow and umber … alongside the creek.”

While higher up the steep-sided canyon, Gigi writes, “Small knots of young aspen … are holding onto their color as tightly as they’re holding onto the mountainside.

As the canyon opens up to the valley below, cottonwoods cluster in groups and stand in
lines like partygoers dressed in their golden finery at an Autumn Harvest Ball.

Across the Owens Valley, Gigi continues, “Every open field, where water courses along canals or spreads out in marshy tracts, hosts these radiant trees. Every neighborhood street is glowing with color. They all seem adamant to outshine one another.

“On the east side of Bishop, in the wide-open spaces near the Owens River, are where the larger groups congregate. These groves are wild and wonderful and really show the passage time.

‘Younger trees stand shoulder to shoulder with mature trees, showing off their strength and
resilience. The big, old trunks that have lost their limbs and their shimmering coats, still play a part in the cycle of life out here.

‘There are signs and sounds of life everywhere. There are deer in the canyon and birds in the
trees,” she concluded that when you stand quietly, you can “feel the energy of life as is shifts from one season to the next.”