Trail Ridge Road - Forest Canyon Overlook

Author's Comments

Eleven thousand seven hundred and sixty two feet does something to the air. The light is thinner here, harder edged, and on a July morning before the afternoon weather builds, you can see across to the Divide with a clarity that feels almost unfair. Forest Canyon drops away below the overlook in one long glacial gesture, and the Gorge Lakes catch the early sun in pieces, small and bright and impossibly far down. I come here for the foreground as much as the distance. The tundra in July is doing quiet work that most people walk past on their way to the railing. Tiny alpine wildflowers, pressed low against the wind, blooming in a season that lasts maybe six weeks. A wide lens will give you the canyon and the ridgeline, and that photograph is the one everyone makes. But there is a closer photograph available too, the kind that requires you to kneel down and look at what is happening at your feet, and that one has stayed with me longer. Morning is the time. The afternoon storms arrive on a schedule up here, and the light before nine has a softness that the rest of the day never recovers. Wear more than you think you need. The wind at this elevation is not negotiable, and standing still long enough to actually see the place takes a few minutes of being cold before you settle into it.

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