Yosemite's Mountain Rose

Dear Friends, I greet you from Yosemite

The beautiful Yosemite mountain roses are beginning to bloom.  The Mountain Rose.   Rosa woodsii var. ultramontana  Yosemite's rose belongs to the Rose Family. Rosaceae A shrub with prickly stems and flowers of pink, etc. Yosemite's rose belongs to the Rose Genus. Rosa.    Flowers pinkish ......... Fruits an akene......a dry, hard, 1-seeded fruit not splitting at maturity.

  The simplicity of the rose.  

See a rose....think of love...beauty...music....poetry....all that is sweet and lovely. The pink blossom has five separate petals and is 1-2 inches wide. The flower has 5 sepals fused at the base into a cup. Below the sepal are the bracts. There are numerous stamen. It has 5-7 leaflets..a leaf-like unit of a compound leaf. The leaflet is oval, toothed, and long-tipped.

Rose hip...the berry...the bright red fruit appears in late summer and early fall, sometimes lasting throughout the winter. ....good to make jelly and tea...and high in Vitamin C.  The hip may be eaten raw or cooked.  Found blooming....June through August.......in moist forest locations at elevations between 3500-11,500 feet....and in Yosemite West.

The botany books often forget to write....how fragrant the mountain rose is.....the rich fragrance of the rose...of love...of the lovely spring...with all the birds singing love songs.  Yes, in Weeden's book:  Sierra Nevada Flora, he writes of the mountain rose, "odor unusually pleasant."  None of the other species of rose listed in his book...get a mention of the fragrance!!!

John Muir writes, "The small wild rose makes large thickets deliciously fragrant, especially on a dewy morning and after showers."  Rose water....the perfume made from water and rose petals...an attar of roses.  The rosebud....before the flower begins opening up..... is ever so beautiful.  To find a rose in the mountain wilderness, lifts one's spirit.

 

One can be poor...and still feel that life is a bed of roses....after seeing a mountain rose in Yosemite!!!  Everyone loves the rose....it's our national flower!!!  Yosemite's wildlife love the wild rose...as it grows into a shrub....making large thickets..rosebushes... providing rose petals to eat providing rose hips....berries to eat providing safe prickly habitat for small animals and birds.

The delicate gift of the rose.....makes one's day rosy. Share a bottle of rose`....a light pink wine. Stop and smell the roses...put down the camera for a second.... and as Muir invites us....allow your sensitive pure heart be exposed to the light rays of Nature.

John Muir writes,

"No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul know these mountains.... See how willingly Nature  poses herself upon photographers' plates. Yet no earthy chemicals are so sensitive as the human soul. All that is required is exposure, and purity of material."

 

Come to Yosemite and get the direct exposure to the rich fragrance and delicate beauty of Yosemite's mountain rose....and to all of Yosemite...and to all of Nature.  Just as ....the plates and Kodak film of yesterday...and the digital camera's sensor of today............when exposed to Nature...produce an image,

let your soul be exposed to Nature...to produce an image....on your heart ...the image of Nature photographed upon your heart. Be one with Beauty as Ansel Adams writes.  Be one with Nature as John Muir invites us... and the image on your heart will be clear .....and not blurry.

A deep and direct exposure with Nature is one where you become fully absorbed in the moment..and like a Kodak moment in which Nature is written on the film... this Nature moment will be written on your heart.  Muir writes, "all that is required is exposure...and the purity of material.".....the purity of your heart....your soul.....and the purity of the mountains....the purity of Nature.   Become one.

 

Experience JOY! Experience a SENSE of WONDER! Experience a rose-colored life!!! expose....photography....to subject a sensitized film or plate to actinic rays actinic......light rays that produce chemical changes expose...to lay open....to lay open one's soul....making one's soul sensitive like the photographic film and plates to so as to produce the image of Nature on your soul exposure....the time during which photographic film or plates is exposed kodak moment....an event for which you or someone wished someone nearby had a camera to take a picture....a moment that is so beautiful or awesome that it deserves to be preserved with a picture......a rare or onetime moment that is worthy to captured by a picture or should have been life...beautiful onetime moments....as beautiful as a rose...beautiful present moments strung together as a beautiful rosette.

As Muir writes..."to know the mountains....all that is required is exposure and purity of material."  You must experience Yosemite yourself...come with an open and pure heart... and be one with Nature......  Stay in a beautiful Scenic Wonders' cabin in the mountains of Yosemite West....where the mountain rose likes to grow.  Set your camera and the camera of your soul for a long exposure on Yosemite...and on Nature.

Another terrific day in Yosemite