Smith Rock State Park

Author's Comments

The first light at Smith Rock does not arrive so much as it declares itself. From the overlook near the parking lot, before the sun has cleared the eastern rim, the tuff walls across the canyon turn a color I have not quite seen anywhere else in Oregon - somewhere between apricot and rust, deepening for maybe fifteen minutes and then softening as the day takes over. The river below stays in shadow longer, which is part of what makes the composition work. Warm rock, cool water, the Cascades still holding their pink on the far horizon. I have hiked Misery Ridge in three seasons and I still think October is the one. The summer haze that flattens the volcanoes is gone, the light gets long earlier in the afternoon, and the climbers on the walls become small enough to give the scale away in a way that a wide empty photograph never quite does. From the top of the loop, Monkey Face rises out of the canyon like something a geologist made up, and the river bends around it in a horseshoe that only really reads from above. The canyon floor is a different park entirely. Down there the walls press in overhead and the light comes filtered and reflected, orange bouncing off orange, and the trail keeps you close enough to hear climbers calling to each other on routes I will never touch. Come at sunrise on a weekday if you can. The lot fills fast, and the light is gone before most visitors have finished their coffee.

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