Baker Lake

Author's Comments

The reflection is the photograph everyone comes for, and the reflection is genuinely there, but you have to earn it. Mount Baker holds the north end of the lake like a presiding spirit, and on the right morning, before the wind comes up, the entire volcano lays itself down on the water in a near-perfect double. That window is narrow. By nine the surface starts to ripple and the mountain pulls back into the sky where it belongs. I prefer the trail to the campgrounds. The Baker Lake Trail runs the eastern shore for fourteen miles and most people walk only the first two, which is fine, because those first two pass through cedars old enough to make you stop talking. Late summer and early fall are when this forest is at its best - the understory still green, the light coming through in broken columns, the lake glimpsed between trunks in pieces of pale blue. The old growth here is the quieter subject and the one I keep returning for. The volcano is the headline. The forest is the actual story. Bring a Northwest Forest Pass. Come on a weekday if you can. The crowds are thin enough that you can spend a morning here and hear mostly water and wind and the occasional kingfisher, which is not nothing in a state where the famous places have started to feel famous.

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