Wildflowers on a Primordial Plain
Made in spring 2005 following the exceptionally wet 2004–05 rainy season, this panorama looks across one of Carrizo Plain’s broadest and most remote landscapes. Goldfields dominate the foreground, punctuated by lupines, California poppies and fiddlenecks, while the open plain extends toward a series of uniquely rounded hills rising beyond the bloom. With little to interrupt the horizon, the landscape has an ancient, almost primordial character—a brief season of wildflowers appearing across terrain shaped over immense spans of geological time.
Made in spring 2005 following the exceptionally wet 2004–05 rainy season, this panorama looks across one of Carrizo Plain’s broadest and most remote landscapes. Goldfields dominate the foreground, punctuated by lupines, California poppies and fiddlenecks, while the open plain extends toward a series of uniquely rounded hills rising beyond the bloom. In their contours and surface textures — especially the isolated hill at center-left and the larger forms to the right — the land can seem almost animate, as if some primordial creature were just beneath the surface, pressing upward and stretching the earth above it. With little to interrupt the horizon, the landscape takes on an ancient, almost primordial character — a brief season of wildflowers appearing across terrain shaped over immense spans of geological time.