what is a nature preserve...

...but a piece of the landscape that someone has put a frame around and named?

This I thought as I wandered around the Kaweah Oaks Preserve, a wonderfully sleepy piece of land on the road to Sequoia National Park. So if you're not in the mood to drive up the highest mountains in the lower 48 states and see the largest trees on earth, you can always take a stroll around these fields and densely foliated thickets that remind me of east coast nature preserves. There's a common thread -- lots of low key life forms (birds, bugs and botany), including maybe ticks, but also lots of soul. (photo of somewhere else because my batteries died)