two nights and one day

"well, so i got a new rice cooker..."

the beginning of this story was not what Melanie and i expected. we tossed sideways glances at each other. or at least we tossed sideways glances at each other as much as we could in the dark.

"...and the instructions are, like, really precise. like, exactly a cup of rice, you know? and, i mean, i don't have measuring cups."

it was about 10pm. it wasn't exactly blizzard conditions, but it had been snowing on and off for several hours.

"so anyways, i don't have a car, and who wants to drive in this anyways, so i walked over to sprouts, but they didn't really have any measuring cups. and when the weather's like this, i'm not gonna ride my bike, you know? so i jogged over to target and bought some measuring cups."

we were on top of mount sanitas.

"and i was about to head up, but i thought 'what could i do that would be really silly or ridiculous?' and i was like 'i could get a cup of snow from the top of mount sanitas!'"

he had jogged up four or five minutes before. he was wearing shorts.

"so yeah, anyways, here i am."

he had told us that he moved to boulder four years ago. i asked him what brought him here. it turns out that what happened is that he bought a new rice cooker.

"uh... alright, i'm gonna go make my rice now."

he had finished packing snow into his measuring cup. he turned and ran back down the mountain.

when it isn't snowing, it tends to be rather beautiful. we've had weather in the sixties pretty regularly lately. a few weeks ago it was nice enough that Melanie, Summer, and i scrambled up the second flatiron. i got a different sort of topout photo (above), and had nice morning backlighting on the way down (below).



not too long later, a good round of snow hit. Melanie and i took the occasion to hike up sanitas to take some snowstorm night photos from the top. i had a vision of clouds coming and going during the course of an 8-10 minute exposure. i also set up a self-portrait that didn't work even a little bit, but which i posted on my blog anyways.



it was here that we met the man with the new rice cooker. obviously i didn't ask for his name, or take  a photo of him to post on my blog, "humans of mount sanitas." at least one of my photos worked out pretty much exactly as i had envisioned--the left half of the frame is blurred and obscured by falling snow/low clouds, while city lights shine through on the right. but i didn't like the rest of the composition very much, and didn't provide any supplemental light to the rock in front. so i don't like it nearly as much as the photo that is at the top of this post.

last monday i twisted my ankle while bouldering. it was slowly recovering, so obviously the only choice was to go on a night hike in breathtakingly strong wind on saturday night. Melanie and i hiked up the anemone trail. as we got close to the top, a mostly dead tree creaked and swayed. i stepped over the final rise and felt like i was being lifted off of my feet. i ducked back behind some rocks and said "well. this is good enough for me!"

just as we started down, i noticed how nicely two dead trees complemented the landscape--a tall and straight one (the creaky tree!) to balance the flatlands out to the east, and a short twisted one to tuck underneath green mountain. i set up a tripod and took a series of shots that captured the swaying softness of the tall tree with some bursts from my headlamp to illuminate the short tree. if i'm going to be doing this thing very often, i'm going to need to get a filter for my headlamp, as it's hard to balance the lighting in post-processing when all of the foreground light is smurf blue.