The Defiant & Elegant Ones: Junipers Above Olympic Valley
- Michael Kennedy
- Jul 9
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 4
Getting there is never easy, but well worth the hustle up top to be in their company. I’m talking about the defiant and elegant Junipers that grace our Olympic Valley mountains.
“The Juniper is a tree of defiance, of odd angles and unbending will.
It doesn’t yield—it endures.” ~ Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Like an optimistic version of William Blake’s “Blasted Trees and Flattened Crops,” (above image), these twisted old sentinels demonstrate the greatest of all qualities: patience, persistence, strength, adaptability, resilience and staying power.
The Juniper asks no mercy of the mountain. It doesn’t bargain with the relentless cold winter winds and arctic blasts or arid summers. It simply lives. That’s its rebellion.
The Juniper survives, offering us a glimpse of what’s possible.
In the rough & tumble tango between hiker and mountain, connection with nature gives us momentum.
You go up and up, and there’s always something higher, brighter, more saturated in color, more perfect in shape, different from yesterday, but it’s the same mountain every day.
Sometimes when you hike it, you feel so light that your feet barely touch the ground, and you realize that these are some of the happiest days of your life.
A good hike for me is when the Juniper says, “Stick around a while, this story is yours too.”
In this spirit, I’ve given my old friends names, names that for me compliment and capture the “mana” of the person. For example, the tree above is the Walt Whitman, and you know which one is the William Blake, of course.
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I’m Michael Kennedy, a resident of Olympic Valley, CA (in photo above). I’m a visual storyteller and I love exploring nature and getting lost in the Junipers. I know we live in a world that demands our attention. I just want to say thank you for your attention. If you enjoyed this post, please share with a friend. For more photos and stories visit www.BlueWolfGallery.com.
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