Terra Firma with Liquid Highlights - Mary Edwards Photography

Terra Firma with Liquid Highlights

From The Air # 0806
Wallowa Lake is a stunning example of a glacially formed lake, flanked by two lateral moraines east and west and a terminal moraine at the north end. The lake is approximately 3.5 miles long, about ¾ of a mile wide, with a depth of about 300 feet. "From The Air” one can easily see the heaving scour of the glacier that moved through here 10,000 years ago. The sensual folding of land reveals several advances and retreats of ancient ice. The timing to achieve this shot was critical. The "window" of time to capture the mountains still capped with clean white snow and the blazing spring green covering the surrounding moraines and valley, is very small. Often by time the valley is green and you get a clear day to fly, the snow is dirt streaked and receding fast. I flew a number of years before I captured a composition worthy of print.
D River
Sunrise Wallowa River
I was headed west out of the town of Wallowa on an early winter morning, when a glance in my rear view mirror caused me to nearly wreck my truck. A fiery dawn was unfolding in the east, spilling gold reflections upon the water. I’ve had a number of these “wreck your truck” moments living in this valley and on this morning I was fortunate enough to have my camera. Needless to say, I was late for my appointment.
Palouse Waves # 7746
Known for its sensual rolling hills, the Palouse Prairie was formed primarily during the ice ages, but its beginnings lay in the layers and layers of molten lava from the Columbia River Basalt eruptions. Glacial advances and retreats, massive floods from collapsing ancient ice dams and wind, all worked to sculpt this landscape. Wind in particular played a major role in depositing the rich soil of the Palouse, known as loess. Soil depths range from a few inches to as much as 5 feet in some areas. Prior to the first stab of a plow blade into the fertile mantle of this area in the late 1880's, it was home to an amazingly diverse prairie of perennial grasses such as Bluebunch wheatgrass and Idaho fescue. Today nearly all of the Palouse Prairie is planted in agricultural crops. The native prairie is one of the most endangered ecosystems in the United States, with little more than one percent of the original prairie still in existence. This composition was shot from atop Steptoe Butte, another fascinating feature of this landscape. Steptoe Butte is a quartzite island jutting out of the silty deposits of Palouse loess. The rock formation is around 400 million years old, considerably older than the relatively "youthful" deposits of the Columbia River Basalt eruptions, of 7-15 million years ago.

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