Todd Lake

Author's Comments

Todd Lake is small enough to walk around in twenty minutes and that is part of the point. Broken Top sits close - closer than at almost any other lake on the byway - and on a windless morning the reflection comes in tight and clean, the mountain almost touching itself across the surface. I get there before the road has any other cars on it. Late July, maybe early August, when the meadows are still holding their color. Paintbrush, lupine, the occasional patch of shooting stars near the wetter edges. The half-mile in from the parking area is forgiving and most photographers I have met on this trail are already set up by the time I arrive, working the south end where the mountain stacks behind the water in the most direct way. The window for the reflection is short. Maybe an hour after first light before the thermals start moving across the surface and the mirror breaks up. Once it goes, it does not come back until evening, and evening here puts the mountain in shadow against the brighter sky, which is its own photograph but not the one most people are after. Bring the repellent. I am not exaggerating about the mosquitoes in July. They are the price of the wildflowers and the price seems fair until you are standing in them, and then it does not. A head net is not a ridiculous thing to carry. The lake does not give you the dramatic scale of the bigger Cascade lakes. It gives you intimacy. The mountain is right there. That is the whole argument.

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