Yankee Boy Basin

Author's Comments

Twelve thousand feet does something to light. The air is thinner and the colors come through cleaner, and on a July morning in Yankee Boy Basin you understand why people drive battered roads in the dark to be here at sunrise. The basin sits below Mount Sneffels like an offering. The columbine come up in waves, pale blue and white against the green, and the paintbrush burns red in the foreground if you know where to kneel. The sunflowers lean east. I came in for the first time on a morning when the clouds were still caught on the ridge, and the light moved across the basin in pieces, lighting one slope and leaving another in shadow. That is the photograph worth waiting for. Not the wide shot of the whole bowl, though that is real and worth making, but the moment when a single shaft of sun finds a patch of flowers and the ruins of an old mine sit just at the edge of the frame, half forgotten. The mountain holds the back of the composition. The flowers hold the front. Everything in between is light. Mid to late July is the window and it is narrow. A week early and the columbine are still tight. A week late and the paintbrush has gone past. The road from Camp Bird requires a vehicle that can take a beating, and the upper basin asks for clearance you should not improvise. Come early. Sleep in Ouray and start the drive before five. By the time the day-trippers arrive from Telluride, you will have already made the photograph and be sitting somewhere with coffee, watching the light flatten out.

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