Index Town Wall

Author's Comments

The wall does something to the scale of Index that I find hard to describe without standing in front of it. The town is small, maybe two streets that matter, and then this five hundred foot face of granite rises directly behind it as if someone had set a stage flat against the back of the buildings. You look up and the geometry of the place rearranges itself. Evenings are when it earns the photograph. The wall faces roughly southwest, and in late summer and early fall the granite catches the last hour of sun and goes from gray to a warm pale gold that holds for maybe thirty minutes. The river runs cold at the base. The town sits in shadow well before the wall does, which gives you a layered exposure problem worth solving - dark foreground, lit cliff, sky going blue above. A longer lens compresses the relationship between town and rock in a way that feels honest to how the place actually feels when you are standing there. The Lower Town Wall trailhead will get you close enough to see climbers as small bright shapes against the granite, which is its own photograph if you have the patience. But I tend to stay back. The wide view from the road, with a few rooftops in the frame for scale, is the image that does the work. Come on a clear evening in September. Stay until the light is gone.

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