Frostline

I went out because the forecast had dropped. Temperatures were diving and there was a chance of the season’s first snow, and in autumn in Logan Canyon that’s the kind of thing you act on immediately — at elevation the color turns and goes in days, and you don’t get to take your time.

We lived in Logan for three years and I was up that canyon a few times a week every autumn, building a mental map of which slopes did what. Most of my spots were aspen. This one wasn’t; it’s scrub maple and sumac, so it runs red and orange instead of gold, and I’d admired it in passing for a couple of seasons without ever stopping to shoot it.

That morning it had a frost line across it. Heavy frost, maybe a little sleet in it, cutting a clean horizontal through the hillside with everything above it blue-white and everything below still burning. The two seasons overlapping in the same frame, which in my experience you get a handful of days a year if you’re paying attention, and a bit lucky.

This is from the road, about two-thirds of the way up the canyon. There’s a gulch between me and that hillside where the Logan River runs, so there was never a question of getting closer. Late morning, cold but not punishing down at road level, the first taste of winter that year.