Sometimes you take a pic and are at loss to explain it. That was the case here … Recently, I asked Chat GPT the following in relation to the pic, “What story do you think it tells?” Here is my AI assistant’s verbatim reply:

This image tells a story of quiet collapse—of nature reclaiming itself through decay, erosion, and time. The fallen tree in the foreground suggests the end of one life cycle, yet it lies in a landscape full of growth and texture. It hasn’t been cleared or moved. It’s simply been allowed to fall, rot, and become part of the hillside again.

The distant hills—soft with haze or low cloud—feel timeless. The slope, the sage, the pines: they hint at a dry climate, perhaps somewhere interior, where everything endures more than it thrives. The standing trees in the middle distance seem like survivors—witnesses to whatever brought the tree in the foreground down.

Together, it suggests a place where change is slow but inevitable. Nothing dramatic. No storm or fire. Just gravity, time, and weather doing what they do. If I were to title it, I might consider something like: “What the Hills Remember” or “Without Ceremony” —something that hints at the slow, unobserved changes in the natural world.

I found the answer to be as good as anything I could possiblly have thought to say … And this narrative aligns very well with the actual truth of what made me take the pic. I knew this tree when it was live, before it fell. It was a massive ponderosa pine in the grasslands below my house, brought down by mountain pine beetle in a year when the insect devastated BC Interior forests. It fell, and I always felt this was like the death of a king …

Shot on 4x5 (can’t remember what film), 135mm lens (I remember that!), on Ilford fiber-based Hahnemuele textured art paper