Lily Lake

Author's Comments

Lily Lake does not ask much of you. There is a paved loop, a small parking lot off Highway 7, and a body of water sitting at just under nine thousand feet with Longs Peak rising behind it. That is the whole proposition. What surprises me, every time I come back, is how much the lake gives in return for how little it requires. The reflection is the photograph. From the southeast shore at first light, before any wind has come up, Longs Peak and Mount Meeker double themselves in the water with that particular alpine clarity that only happens at altitude in the half hour after the sun crests the eastern ridges. In July and August the lily pads carpet the near shore, and they save the foreground from feeling empty. Without them the composition is a postcard. With them it becomes something with weight in the front of the frame and depth carrying you back to the peaks. I prefer this place in late September. The pads are fading by then, going copper and rust at the edges, and the air has thinned into that high country crispness that summer never quite achieves. Mornings are cold enough that you will want gloves while you wait for the light. Wait anyway. The window when the peaks catch alpenglow and the water is still glass is brief, often less than ten minutes, and it does not happen on windy mornings at all. Come early. Come with a tripod. Walk the loop slowly afterward. There are smaller compositions along the north shore that almost no one stops for, and on the right morning they are the photographs you will keep.

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