Bert Gildart: Writer and Photographer

©Bert Gildart: Several days ago we departed Anza Borrego and the campsite at Pegleg where we had parked our Airstream for the past three months. During the course of our stay we met wonderful people and enjoyed our explorations of this huge desert park.

Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll most likely be posting a few blogs reflecting  on our stay in this the largest of all of our nation’s contiguous state parks. There’s much about our experiences there that have yet to crystallize.

One of the features that attracted us to Anza Borrego was its night skies; and the small town of Borrego Springs takes great pride in declaring that it is devoted to preserving its night-time environment. We became fascinated with this concept and decided that while heading back home to Montana, we’d make stops at areas claiming a dark-sky status.

VANISHING DARK SKIES

Not many such places are left, but several national park administered areas still remain that way and I’ve written about several to include Organ Pipe and Death Valley.

Although Joshua Tree National Park is surrounded by huge metropolitan areas, nevertheless, it claims a dark-sky status. We camped high in the park at Jumbo Rocks Campground and because late campers were driving through – and because the moon was still up – I waited until 3 a.m. to take my photo.

L to R: Joshua Tree still provides dark skies for those camped at Jumbo Rocks; Chloride Production is a lonely land separating two national park administered areas; Mojave National Preserve.

No problem getting back up as we mature gentlemen have a built-in alarm that needs to be attended to several times at night.

Earlier I had found a spot for our Airstream that offered an ideal foreground. The spot enabled me to set up my tripod immediately outside the trailer and then return inside and read, waiting for the long time exposures to complete their course. I made a one-hour exposure, shown here, and several other short exposures using high-ISO readings. Obviously it was the one-hour exposure that created the lengthy star trails. I may show the other images in subsequent postings for they are also instructive.

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE

Our next destination was Mojave National Preserve and from previous experience we knew that this desert region offers lands that are incredibly lonely meaning that the possibility for dark skies was great. But on this occasion, although the completely isolated camping was blissful, a thin haze filtered in advertising the one night we had for night photography would not be ideal.

But as photographers know, you go with what you have. In this case, it meant the haze would mute the sun, creating a huge orb which I could further dramatize using an extreme telephoto lens.

DARK SKIES FOREVER

Though lonely lands and dark sky areas still exist they are becoming increasingly difficult to find, and that makes a commentary on our burgeoning human populations. Mostly, these growths have occurred in the past 100 years, and if this growth continues, what will it be like 100 years further down the road?

May lonely lands and dark skies be with us forever.

THIS TIME TWO YEARS AGO:

*Armed Escort in Organ Pipe

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 11:58 am and is filed under National Lands, Natural History/Conservation, RV Travel, Travel, View Point. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.