Post Script: I've begun to get inquiries about the "editing" of these photographs of the Sacramento-Central Valley hills. I got the shots by pulling onto the shoulder of Interstate 5 and aiming at the hills in the distance. I stopped every five to ten minutes because the hills, like some other living things, are too beautiful to ignore. The images aren't "Photoshopped." This is exactly the way the hills looked on the first day of May. There was no need at all to use editing tricks to "enhance" what was already exactly right.

Driving from north to south along the western edge of California’s great central valley is always a journey that delights the senses, and at this time of year the hills are alive and changing moment by moment. South of the San Francisco Bay Area the hills still wear their winter-spring fur. Midway down the valley the hills are browner with only a hint of green still on them. There is unheard visual music in these hills. Greener hills hum. Farther south the drier grasses cry out for rain or mist or fog that can’t come again until at least November. The lyrical images below are a symphony. Click on these images to see them larger.