Mad Creek, Steamboat, Colorado Many glacier-fed streams experience a change in flow not only through the season, but through the day as well. Why? During the day, high temperatures and solar radiation melt team up to melt the mountaintop ice, only relenting when that side of the earth leaves the sun in favor of cold, dark night. But when the sun rises again, more of that beautiful clear water swells downhill towards the rivers and oceans beyond. So if you ever need to cross a glacial river, it might be easier at night. Actually, nevermind. That sounds freaking cold.
Yampa River, Colorado // Serenity comes in many forms, but few things are quite as peaceful as watching the shadow of one mountain creep up the slopes of another. A pokey, buggy, breathless bushwhack hike is a small price to pay for that kind of waking meditation. It's a special sense of unity with your surroundings, a recognition of being part of something larger than yourself, a combination of smallness and oneness. This image in particular captures that feeling for me in the parallel lines of the road and the river, the artificial and the natural meandering together across the valley floor. Artifice imitates life? Or perhaps there's hardly such a thing as artifice in the first place.
Flat Tops Wilderness, Colorado // This image is about expansiveness and possibilities. Possibility is the lifeblood of freedom, a value that I think most of us in the West hold fairly dear. As humans, there are many things that constrain us--our laws, our circumstances, our power, our culture. There is really no end to the number of boxes within which we are confined. For each one we escape, there is a slightly larger one waiting. But when I stand under the vast mountain sky, I at least feel as if I've made it to the biggest box.
