Larrabee State Park

Author's Comments

The sandstone is the reason. Wind and water have spent centuries working at it, and what is left along the shoreline at Larrabee is closer to sculpture than geology - honeycombed, scalloped, hollowed into shapes that look almost deliberate. At low tide in late afternoon, when the sun has dropped low enough over the San Juans to rake across the rock at an angle, those textures come alive. The shadows do the work. A flat midday sun erases everything that makes this coast worth photographing, so I plan around the tide chart and the hour, and I accept that some days the two will not align. September is my favorite month here. The summer crowds have softened, the marine layer burns off earlier, and the light over Samish Bay turns the kind of warm gold that flatters the sandstone and the water both. The islands sit out there in layered silhouette, and on a clear evening you can pick out three or four ridgelines stacked into the distance. A long exposure smooths the bay into something dreamlike, but I have come to prefer shorter exposures that keep the texture of the water against the texture of the rock. That contrast is the photograph. Walk down to the shore at Wildcat Cove and then keep going. Most visitors stop at the first viewpoint. The tide pools further along the rocks reward anyone willing to scramble a little, and the compositions get stranger and more specific the further you wander. Bring shoes you do not mind soaking. Check the tide table twice.

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