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I was poking around on the north side of the mountain most of the morning, not finding much in the way of mushrooms or anything else to satisfy my photographic spirits, so I drove up the mountain then south along Bolinas Ridge, hooked a right at Rock Spring and pulled out near Sunset Point to take in the view before heading home. Looking over the scene, scanning for bobcats, I suddenly notice something is amiss! Holy cow! It's the end of an era!
Here's what I saw. Can you tell what's different?
When I saw what had happened I drove back up to the nearest parking lot and hiked down to visit the tree. The wind-sculpted top that's been iconic of Mt. Tam for at least 40 years (and doublessly much longer) is now an explosion of leafy branches on the ground below. A couple of large branches snagged on the way down and are now swinging in the wind, would-be widow-makers.
Here's how it used to look from the same spot:
Next is a picture of the same tree from Galen Rowell's book Bay Area Wild, which came out in 1997. According to the stock image profile at Mountain Light (which, like the book, also understandably misidentifies the Douglas fir as a Monterey pine due to its uncharacteristic layering of branches), the photograph was made in 1995.
And to take it back another 20 years, here's the same tree in the book Tamalpais, by Bud Fellom and Richard Stortroen, that came out in 1978:
If you know of an even older picture showing that iconic tree, I'd love to see it.
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