Nature

The lakes at the Valley of Five Lakes are truly beautiful — like jade in every color. But Jasper, reborn after the fire, fascinates me more. Burnt trees, yellow grass, new shoots everywhere. Most charred trunks stand straight up; this one is different: twisted, supple, as if it had once yielded to the fire, then burst through its scorched skin and come alive, winding upward like a dragon.

Around it stand solitary trunks, forked branches, drooping twigs — leads and ensemble both rich. I place black-and-white beside color for extension, contrast, and counterpoint. The same scene, different focus, mood, and feeling.

Two unrelated places, pieced together by lines.

At Athabasca Falls I turned my lens away and walked downstream of the falls. The torrent forces its way out of the narrow channel, sweeps around tilted shale, and plunges down. The Canadian Rockies’ distinctive rock textures braid with the restless water — abstract, yet concrete.

Back at the Valley of Five Lakes — I’ve forgotten which lake this was. Charred deadwood, a golden slope, tender new grass, gem-like water, plus smoke-veiled distant mountains, glaring white snow, and a gray-blue sky, layer upon layer. Different textures and colors, yet silky together; trunks and reflections weave these bands of color. Only the scattered stones slightly ruffle the stillness.

Lake to canyon to waterfall: from stillness to torrent.

I expected Pyramid Mountain and Pyramid Lake to be as quiet and chilly as the frame suggests; behind me it was a racket — photographing, hiking, chatting, even a wedding. Mist lifted slowly off the water, the gold on the peak burned brighter, and the deadwood by the shore stayed stubborn.

Mistaya Canyon is a busy viewpoint. I waited for a gap — between one crowd leaving and the next arriving — to capture only the sound of mountain and river. Water from above twists and turns through the canyon, chasing downward.

Only from higher up could I see the full sweep of Sunwapta Falls. No satisfying wide angle, no special weather, none of autumn’s rich colors — just a record of water’s force: around a tree-ringed islet, joining, then surging down.

Early morning at Moraine Lake: scrambling down the Rockpile to dodge the crowds. An empty shore; a single lone boat drifting slowly beneath the immense mountain shadow. Mountains and water in ink tones — the red boat lending a touch of life.

Johnston Canyon again, this time from farther back. The stream comes through the rocks, hops down stone steps, settles into pools. A hidden place, an enchanted forest — there might really be Smurfs living nearby. The green so dark, so secret — could that odd rock be Gargamel’s house?

Sunwapta Falls hides a portal of its own: currents meeting, tumbling down from the dome into a Y. I expected violent collision; instead there was none — it all flowed as one.

On a rainy autumn day in Harriman, the finest autumn and the strangest colors were not in the forest or the treetops, but at the water’s edge, on the lake. Dark, deep water; fallen leaves scattered beside the decaying summer lotus leaves — another kind of brilliance. Look closer: beads of water on the leaves, enough to lose track of the season entirely — spring, summer, autumn, winter.

At Mohonk in autumn, the colors on the mountaintop are always more delicate than below. Early morning, the lake dark and deep; riders already out along the shore. The pavilion still empty, its posts framing the morning light. Crowds come and go, the trees turn — only the rocks unchanged, as ever.

Harriman again, autumn again, rain again. The lake a mirror; the woods with the cool beauty of a runway model — high cheekbones, hastily done hair, sharp lines. Two old boats have rested at the bank so long that autumn has climbed aboard. Deep in the woods, a shaft of light — so bright on the other side. Could that be heaven?

The branches in the foreground look like a family out to see the autumn colors, standing tall and small, still passing judgment on the colors across the shore.

Both late autumn, yet nothing alike. The first: first snow in sunlight, yellow leaves still on the branches, snow redrawing the wood in white.

The second: rain falling, the light already going. Beside a dim path, bare branches tangle — then a flash of yellow, like flame climbing the branches, recording the last of autumn.

At Minnewaska, along the path by the upstream creek, the little mounds of snow were especially lovely. Ink-black water against white banks, as if color had stopped working here.

And then the falls downstream: deep winter, the flow thinned but not yet frozen — a little movement still remained. Snow mounded along the bank, soft and rounded, nothing like the hard edges of ice and broken rock in the stream.

In this Great Sand Dunes group, the first two photographs exist for the third: the footprints. The dunes run like bands of taut muscle, light folding them so severely it almost hurts to look at — a landscape beyond human time, travelers walking through it. And then that line of footprints: a conquest, made before the wind erases our traces.

A right turn at the river mouth nearly cost us Second Beach. I'd expected the Pacific Northwest coast to stay as somber as it looked; up close, every pool and rock was teeming with life. In the fog the sea stacks stood jagged, each crowned with an unruly head of trees.

Between these two photographs, an eagle snatched a weary seabird off the sand and carried it away. The bird, I suspect, did not survive.

I stubbornly wanted Yellowstone Canyon in these colors. Perhaps because I had not yet been to Alaska, nor the Canadian Rockies. The canyon's own colors did little for me, so I left a little color to the river and pushed it to the extreme — made a dream of it, one that exists only in a dream.