Picture Lake earns its name...

One of the most photographed spots in North America is 120 miles northeast of Seattle: a small alpine lake about 5200 feet up Mount Baker. (This factoid about the lake's 'photographability' comes from Life Magazine, and I guess they oughtta know.) It's one of my favorite places on the planet. I've photographed this lake in spring, summer, and fall. I've picnicked on its banks, plucked huckleberries for ice cream and pies from its fragile meadows, and imbibed intoxicants to the point of roaring drunkenness on the dock you see here on a variety of national holidays, including Labor Day when I watched snowboarders in cut-offs haul themselves further up snowpacked cliffs for a day of play in bright sunshine. It's a beautiful spot.

Aside from its showy prettiness, another reason I like going to Heather Meadows is that I never know what the lake will be like when I make the drive, which is exquisite itself. It's a place out of season, just as likely to be frozen over in July as October, and about half the time I've tried to get there, I couldn't make it--roads will be closed to vehicles without chains or piled so high with snow they are impassable in June. I'm not sure why I went this day, except that I recalled once I had gone on October 31st-precisely-in 2004 and found brilliant scarlet, orange and yellow woods filling with delicate snowflakes as they danced in the woods all around the lake. It was one of the most sublime and beautiful spectacles I've ever seen, and I saw it alone. The picture shows I was rewarded today. By chance. Just above the lake, literally just above, the snowline is creeping down. Another week, the possibility of seeing it this way will likely be gone, and I was reminded again at how brief are the opportunities life affords us sometimes.

It's hard to imagine sadness in such a spot, but that is how I felt. I'm a brooder sometimes, I guess. Today, I kept looking at the empty dock and thinking it should not be empty. A thermos of hot coffee and a friend to share this with me would have been nice. Ah, well. This shows the spot along with some additional facts, proof that while I might have been lonely today, I'm not alone in my fascination with this tiny, unpredictable spot tucked in the northern Cascade mountains.