out of chaos...

...come the most beautiful things.  My assignment this week was to sit or lay flat on the ground without encountering a rattlesnake or being stung by any number of creatures living in the sagebrush, to photograph the paintbrush.  Due to a late and very wet snowfall, these members of the figwort family (genus Castilleja) are appearing in abundance out of the chaos of sagebrush skeletons and still-dormant grasses, as if a painter carrying a bucket of red paint tripped and caught himself just in the nick.

I think of paintbrush as being a very deep red, but in actuality, most of the species here are a red orange. Occasionally, I will see one that is almost a blue red in its depth, but those are unusual, and are most common in the high mountain terrain.

As chaos theorists know, some of the most fascinating things emerge from the stew that is life.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image