26 PICTURING MIRACLES 



The Yosemite Park service had been mowing the 

 meadows for the small amount of grass they could 

 get as food for the service horses, killing off the 

 meadow flowers in that way. It happened that there 

 was a conference of Park Superintendents and the 

 Director of Parks in Yosemite that fall. I showed my 

 pictures, talked conservation and the necessity of all 

 parks to protect them as a very valuable asset. I had 

 still pictures of the meadows taken in early days in 

 '95 showing them covered with flowers waist high 

 and the same meadows as they were at this time. As 

 a result, the next day all flowers and all living things 

 were protected in every National Park, and the mow- 

 ing machine, as the people in Yosemite expressed it, 

 "was put on the blink." 



Over 1,200 flowers have been botanized in the 

 small area of 1,400 square miles, perhaps a larger 

 number than in any similar area in the world, start- 

 ing as it does at 2,000 feet elevation and going up 

 in zones to over 14,000 feet. It gives almost every 

 possible climatic condition, so if you are too late to 

 find a flower in one elevation zone, it may be at its 

 prime in the next one above. Obviously Yosemite 

 was a wonderful place for my special hobby, but the 

 hobby outgrew its swaddling clothes. In other words, 

 the average flower took four days to picture and 

 often a week, and as a result thirty seconds on the 



