Paddled to my favorite slab well after nightfall and was immediately distracted by the largest toad I’ve ever seen. When I looked up an hour later, the sky was filled with aurora. Limited to a 100mm macro lens, I turned it with intention toward Grand Portal Point (7.84 miles away) and photographed up and down in a single column until 3:52 AM. At some point in the night I recalled a photo taken three years earlier from the same slab – summer solstice sunrise – and remembered the tonality of the scene being quite similar. Could the two be blended together? That’s the benefit of revisiting landscapes over time. I slept for two hours and paddled on, a pilgrimage that never disappoints.

Families of ducks use boulders at water’s edge for protective rest. I give them a wide arc, but they still get nervous. And when nervous ducks stand, they often poop. It is an art form unto itself. Among the wild designs I’ve seen are a bird sitting on a ledge and a hunched old man waiting to be wiped from existence by the next north gale, the crookedest compass there ever was.

In 2023 I photographed “Boulder Fresco” with a wide-angle lens. In 2024 I photographed that spectacular sandstone canvas with a macro lens and discovered the skeletal remains of life clinging to a tapestry of lichen and moss.

If the northern lights returned on night number two, I slept through the show. My eyes flickered open well after sunrise, a frog snoozing next to me on a bed of mosquito net beneath tripod legs that have supported so much.