Maroon Bells

Author's Comments

Everyone has seen the photograph. The two peaks, the still lake, the aspens going gold along the shore. It is the most photographed place in Colorado for a reason, and the reason holds up even when you are standing there with sixty other photographers and their tripods at five in the morning. The Bells earn it. What the photograph does not tell you is how cold the lake is at first light in late September, or how the peaks do not catch color until well after the sky has gone pink, or how the reflection requires a window of stillness that sometimes does not come at all. I have stood at that shoreline three times and gotten the classic shot maybe once. The other mornings the wind moved across the water and I made something else, something less iconic and more honest. A single aspen leaf on dark water. The peaks half-veiled in cloud. The way the light climbs down the eastern face of North Maroon while the lake is still in shadow. Late September is the window everyone wants and everyone knows it. Take the first shuttle. Bring more layers than you think. And after you have made the photograph you came for, walk past the lake on the trail toward Crater. Most of the crowd does not. The aspens thicken, the peaks shift their angle against you, and the light becomes something you have to work for rather than something handed to you at a known overlook. That is where I have made the photographs I actually keep.

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