Spray Park

Spray Park, Mount Rainier, Washington. It's August, and the annual wildflower display has begun on the slopes of Rainier. The displays are awesome, with whole gardens sprinkled across meadows and adorning the little tarns that dot the flat parks and benches leading up to the glacier fields. A hard hike up steep forest switchbacks dumps me into more open meadows, terracing upwards. A cloud system seems to slowly rotate around me, the mountain holding it like a blanket and defying the sun to burn it off. But the soft light suits my purposes, opens my eyes so often braced against the glare, and lets the color saturate into me like paint on a dropcloth. Sometimes, in the euphoria of exertion to reach a place, and the feast of what I see, I do silent gratitutde for the perfection of creation. But it's not perfect, really. The symmetry doesn't always fall into place. A gardener might place the heather more evenly among the lupine; the islands in the pool could be more zen; Rainier's cone could be backdropped beyond the ridge...it is, instead, imperfect. There are always the flaws, and maybe some give us comfort, some are what we love. And in the end, it's what we expect, what we forgive, what we are.

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Filename: Spray Park
Image Size: 2048x1440 / 3.5MB; Spray Park Mount Rainier Rainier Washington WA landscape landscape photography tarn wildflowers meadow hiking mountains range Ray Palmer Ray Palmer Photography
Contained in galleries: West

Spray Park, Mount Rainier, Washington. It's August, and the annual wildflower display has begun on the slopes of Rainier. The displays are awesome, with whole gardens sprinkled across meadows and adorning the little tarns that dot the flat parks and benches leading up to the glacier fields. A hard hike up steep forest switchbacks dumps me into more open meadows, terracing upwards. A cloud system seems to slowly rotate around me, the mountain holding it like a blanket and defying the sun to burn it off. But the soft light suits my purposes, opens my eyes so often braced against the glare, and lets the color saturate into me like paint on a dropcloth. Sometimes, in the euphoria of exertion to reach a place, and the feast of what I see, I do silent gratitutde for the perfection of creation. But it's not perfect, really. The symmetry doesn't always fall into place. A gardener might place the heather more evenly among the lupine; the islands in the pool could be more zen; Rainier's cone could be backdropped beyond the ridge...it is, instead, imperfect. There are always the flaws, and maybe some give us comfort, some are what we love. And in the end, it's what we expect, what we forgive, what we are.