SLO LIFE Jun/Jul 2017

| VIEW
RIVER OF
MILK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK GVAZDINSKAS
Just off Highway 101 North, near Paso Robles, sitting by itself
atop the gentle slope of a lone hill is the Kim Kardashian of
coast live oaks. Perhaps no other single tree locally has been
more talked about, posted, shared, liked, and commented on
than the one you see here. A little farther away still, around
100,000 light years or so, are the stars in the background.
It was a few years back, on a crystal clear night that Mark
Gvazdinskas loaded up his camera, a Nikon D800, a wideangle
24-70mm lens, and a tripod into his car, and made a
beeline for the spot he likens to a scene from a Dr. Seuss book.
After settling into a rut on the side of the road, the young
photographer stumbled across an uneven pasture when the
famous tree came into view. Setting his camera to a twentysecond
exposure—the longest he explains is possible before
the stars start to move, which would render them blurry in the
composition—he recalls his excitement after looking down at
the tiny screen on the back of his camera, “I just lost it when I
saw how well the shot turned out; it was just the perfect scene.”
Although commonly described as being far, far away, the Milky
Way is actually home sweet home. You live in the Milky Way,
a spiral shaped galaxy that is in a state of perpetual rotation.
Ancient peoples almost universally described the night sky
as a “river of milk,” a name that stuck and has since evolved.
The wonder of our own interstellar backyard is mesmerizing,
especially when juxtaposed against something familiar, such as
the little oak tree, which is what Gvazdinkas has done with this
photograph. But, to truly gain an appreciation for the sheer size
and scale of our own galaxy—just one of the 100 billion known
to exist—consider this: an astronaut traveling at 515,000 miles
per hour (the space shuttle currently reaches a maximum speed
of 17,500 miles per hour), to make it all the way around the
Milky Way, would take 230 million years. SLO LIFE
32 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | JUN/JUL 2017