This was quite a morning.  We arrived around midnight, enjoyed the mountain for a spell under millions of stars of the Milky Way before we crawled in the back of the truck and slept a few hours until the alarm rang around 5 am.  Looking out I was a bit disappointed that the whole landscape was in thick fog, and I thought that there was little chance of any dramatic light happening. Nevertheless, I decided to look for an interesting foreground, just in case. It was warm, very quiet, and the aroma of the tiny lupine was simply deliciously intoxicating.

As soon as I set up, the fog lifted and exposed this magnificent landscape…enough time to make one composition. Just as quickly as it dissolved, the fog returned and once again the landscape was plunged into silence.

Soon after the silence was broken by a spectacular and chilling song of a pack of coyotes that must have been roaming within a couple hundred feet. I felt extremely blessed.  It is one of those memories that I will always cherish.

Mount St. Helens rising from morning fog | Mount St. Helens National Monument, WA

After a couple more hours of sleep, a beautiful warm blue sky day greeted us.  We cooked up breakfast with this glorious view of the mountain and later descended a bit south into the forests to roam about Lewis River.  But that’s another story….