Last fall in Leavenworth, Washington, it had been raining for hours. My friend and I gave up waiting it out and went to breakfast mid-morning. When we stepped back outside, the rain had eased, and the valley had changed completely.
Above us, a small forested rise floated in a sea of white fog, its pines and firs fading softly into the mist. With the ground below and the sky above both gone, the hill seemed to hover, quiet and untethered. I just stood there in awe.
Of course, we decided to chase the fog. We drove slowly down the road, stopping whenever the weather opened something up. Fog poured over rocky ridges, parting just long enough to reveal a few weathered firs standing at the edge before closing in again. Behind them, the mountainside fell into deep shadow, while bright mist swallowed everything else.
Then, as the fog began to lift, the color came through. Gold and rust-red brush climbed the steep slope between dark firs and bare granite, softened by the drifting mist, while the upper mountainside still disappeared into gray. As a winter wildlife and nature photographer, I don’t often get to linger in autumn, but that morning the season’s last color felt like a gift the rain had been holding back.
