AMONG THE Flowers

The memory seems almost like a dream. I walk alone among great fields of vibrant lupine and golden poppies, photographing magnificent landscapes of brilliant color set against red-rock peaks and intense blue sky. Then I look closely, go to my knees and spend an hour capturing all the delicate intricacies of individual columbine, the background a soft pigmented blur. I see a rufous hummingbird defending its territory atop a monument plant on a hillside of lavender larkspur and hot-pink paintbrush, and it becomes one of my most iconic photographs. Then reality calls me back to 2022.

To experience and photograph colorful fields of wildflowers is a photographer’s dream come true, but the problem is that massive blooms are increasingly rare, and when they do appear, they are overrun by people seeking to experience them first-hand or decimated by livestock grazing on vulnerable public lands. Even three decades ago, when I began the project that culminated in my book Golden Poppies of California, there were only three really good blooms in the 15 years