Portal

Alabama Hills, Whitney Portal, CA. As the day began to end, I searched for closure from it in the Alabama Hills, a jumble of desert and rocks heaved up and tilted sideways by earthquakes, baked by the sun, and sculpted by erosion. Outside of Lone Pine, on the Whitney Portal Road, it is a chaotic interlude between the gentle valley below and the solid granite wall that stretches northward. At the skyline, the Sierra serrate the blue, and the wind drives fire clouds overhead and tears them apart. I can see the portal road like a flying V switchbacking up the rock, where it will culminate as the gateway to climb the highest mountain in the lower 48. Walking across that threshold is to enter a mountain wonderland of tarns, cirques, boulder fields, endlessly interesting forest, and ever salivating views. But portals are everywhere, aren't they? I must have passed through one on the road into this complicated world, underneath the Sierra. It's an entrance that I chase through, or maybe an exit I am chased from--I could make a case for either. I suppose the camera is even a passageway in my hands, an instrument by which I frame and define what I'm looking for. And what am I looking for? Knowledge. Confidence. A clear vision. An unwavering heart. How seldom I find it...how seldom I'm found. I drop my weight at the door for awhile, to concentrate on the event of color and detail dissolving into the twilight. And eventually come back, the door opens both ways.

Add to Lightbox Download

Filename: Portal
Image Size: 2048x1365 / 2.2MB; Alabama Hills CA California Eastern Sierra Lone Pine Mount Whitney Sierra Nevada Sierra Range desert landscape mountains range southwest sunset
Contained in galleries: West

Alabama Hills, Whitney Portal, CA. As the day began to end, I searched for closure from it in the Alabama Hills, a jumble of desert and rocks heaved up and tilted sideways by earthquakes, baked by the sun, and sculpted by erosion. Outside of Lone Pine, on the Whitney Portal Road, it is a chaotic interlude between the gentle valley below and the solid granite wall that stretches northward. At the skyline, the Sierra serrate the blue, and the wind drives fire clouds overhead and tears them apart. I can see the portal road like a flying V switchbacking up the rock, where it will culminate as the gateway to climb the highest mountain in the lower 48. Walking across that threshold is to enter a mountain wonderland of tarns, cirques, boulder fields, endlessly interesting forest, and ever salivating views. But portals are everywhere, aren't they? I must have passed through one on the road into this complicated world, underneath the Sierra. It's an entrance that I chase through, or maybe an exit I am chased from--I could make a case for either. I suppose the camera is even a passageway in my hands, an instrument by which I frame and define what I'm looking for. And what am I looking for? Knowledge. Confidence. A clear vision. An unwavering heart. How seldom I find it...how seldom I'm found. I drop my weight at the door for awhile, to concentrate on the event of color and detail dissolving into the twilight. And eventually come back, the door opens both ways.