Wild places in California

Mojave & Great Basin, California

A basin so deep the air itself grows heavy.

36.5° N · 116.9° WOpen plate →

Sierra Nevada, California

Ice carved a hall of granite and left the water falling.

37.7° N · 119.6° WOpen plate →

Redwood National and State Parks, California

A forest that drinks the Pacific fog.

41.2° N · 124.0° WOpen plate →

Santa Lucia Range, Central Coast, California

Where the continent ends in a long green fall to the sea.

36.3° N · 121.8° WOpen plate →

Mojave & Colorado Deserts, California

A garden of stone and a tree that is not quite a tree.

33.9° N · 115.9° WOpen plate →

Sierra Nevada / Carson Range, California / Nevada

A high blue bowl the Sierra could not quite drain.

38.9° N · 120.0° WOpen plate →

Eastern Sierra, near Lee Vining, California

A pale inland sea planted with stone trees.

38.0° N · 119.0° WOpen plate →

Western Sierra Nevada, California

Trees so large they reset your sense of scale.

36.5° N · 118.6° WOpen plate →

Southern Sierra Nevada, California

A Yosemite that kept the canyon and gave away the crowds.

36.8° N · 118.6° WOpen plate →

White Mountains, Inyo National Forest, California

A forest that has been dying, and living, for forty-five centuries.

37.4° N · 118.2° WOpen plate →

Shasta-Trinity National Forest, California

A mountain that stands alone and makes a sky to match.

41.4° N · 122.2° WOpen plate →

Owens Valley, below Mount Whitney, California

Granite that learned to sit still under the highest mountain.

36.6° N · 118.1° WOpen plate →

Searles Lake, near Ridgecrest, California

A stone forest that grew underwater, then the water left.

35.6° N · 117.4° WOpen plate →

Colorado Desert, Font’s Point, California

A desert that hides an ocean of folded earth.

33.3° N · 116.2° WOpen plate →

Lassen Volcanic National Park, California

A mountain that still remembers how to boil.

40.5° N · 121.5° WOpen plate →

Anacapa Island, off Ventura, California

The California that kept its wildness by sitting in the water.

34.0° N · 119.4° WOpen plate →

Shasta-Trinity NF, west of Weed, California

A dark cone the interstate looks at and keeps driving past.

41.4° N · 122.3° WOpen plate →

Castle Crags Wilderness, Shasta-Trinity NF, California

Granite towers the interstate only glances at.

41.2° N · 122.3° WOpen plate →

Medicine Lake Volcano, Modoc NF, California

A caldera lake the obsidian still keeps.

41.6° N · 121.6° WOpen plate →

Lava Beds National Monument, Modoc & Siskiyou, California

Black rock the tubes still keep cool.

41.7° N · 121.5° WOpen plate →

Trinity Divide, Shasta-Trinity NF, California

The quiet mountain that looks back at Shasta.

41.3° N · 122.5° WOpen plate →

Pinnacles National Park, Gabilan Range, California

Rhyolite High Peaks over chaparral.

36.5° N · 121.2° WOpen plate →

Point Reyes National Seashore, Marin, California

A headland that still feels like the continent’s end.

38.0° N · 123.0° WOpen plate →

Mojave National Preserve, California

A singing dune sea under the Providence Mountains.

34.9° N · 115.7° WOpen plate →

McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park, California

Spring water falling into a teal bowl.

41.0° N · 121.7° WOpen plate →

Lost Coast, King Range National Conservation Area, California

California’s roadless coast.

40.0° N · 124.1° WOpen plate →