Morning Crossing

There’s an elk in this photograph but she can be hard to spot. Follow the bend around, past the point on the left, a few yards out from the bank and just left of the geese. She’s small. I watched her swim the whole width of the Snake that morning and disappear up the far side, and I never saw her again.

I’d spent a restless night in the back of my car at a dispersed site up on Shadow Mountain and was at the bend in blue hour because I wasn’t sleeping anyway. The colour that came up was pale — pastel pinks rather than anything fiery — and I was fine with it. It suited what the morning actually was.

The water was as still as I’ve had it there. Fog had lifted off the surface not long before, and the only movement on it came from animals: the elk crossing, a dozen geese working across the frame, fish breaking the surface here and there. Mount Moran took the light and gave it back almost whole in that still water.