Bamberger Ranch, Upper Miller Creek, Warbler Trail Branch, Tributary

This is about 180 degrees of material extracted from a full 360 degree HDR panorama, and the composition may yet benefit from further cropping. It shows an unusually nice example of one of the many small tributaries that cuts its way down through the cedar-covered slopes to feed Upper Miller Creek. This particular one is well downstream from the falls shown yesterday. The best vantage point for the this sequence turned-out to be squarely in the middle of the creek, but with the water only a few inches deep at that point, it was no problem at all, except for the water's interactions with the grass growing amongst it; with eighteen images to shoot to complete the panorama, I really needed that grass to hold its pose. At least there was no wind.

For those not familiar with the term "cedar" as used in the American southwest, the trees in question are actually Juniperus ashei, variously known by common names like mountain juniper, mountain cedar, and ashe juniper, but everyone really just calls it "cedar", even though it is not a cedar, and they have been doing so for at least a century throughout the southwest. If memory serves, Aldo Leopold commented on this peculiar naming in his 1924 essay Grass, Brush, Timber and Fire in Southern Arizona, a time at which the name was already firmly established.