Rachael Plunkett

With one of the widest geographic ranges of all the conifers, the larch family is known for its very peculiar habits: It loses its needles, more like deciduous maple or oak trees than its evergreen counterparts. Growing on mountain slopes, in valleys and in swampy areas, larches can be found with Douglas fir and ponderosa pine companions in great masses in Eastern Oregon. More

I started to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into after the sun dipped below Eastern Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains. There was not a single light in sight besides our own headlamps as we set up our camera gear, serenaded by coyotes yipping to the moonless sky. More