Rock Cut and Tundra Communities Trail

Author's Comments

Twelve thousand feet rearranges what a photographer thinks about. The big view is given to you for free up here. Three hundred and sixty degrees of it, the Continental Divide unrolling in one direction and Forest Canyon falling away in another, and the temptation is to spend the whole hour with a wide lens trying to hold all of it at once. I have done that. The pictures are fine. They are also interchangeable with every other picture made from this trail. The work I keep coming back for is at my feet. The tundra in mid-July is a miniature country - moss campion in tight pink cushions, alpine forget-me-nots almost too blue to be real, sky pilot pushing up between the rocks. None of these plants stand more than an inch or two off the ground. They have spent the entire short summer becoming what they are, and they will be gone by August. A macro lens earns its weight here in a way it does not at lower elevation. Come in the morning. The wind picks up by ten most days and at this altitude wind is not a nuisance, it is a problem. I have had a tripod blown sideways on this trail. The light before nine is cleaner anyway, the divide still holding shadow on its eastern faces, the lakes in the gorge below catching the first real warmth. Stay on the pavement. I mean this practically and I mean it as a photographer. The tundra you step on does not recover in your lifetime. Whatever picture you thought you needed from three feet off the path is not worth what it costs.

Gallery