Forty years is a long time to wait for an image.
I have stood at Conway Summit more times than I can count, always with the hope that this would be the day. The summit is unfailingly beautiful in autumn—golden aspens spilling down the slopes, the Sierra rising in the distance, the air crisp and alive. It is one of the most special autumn scenes in California, perhaps even in the entire United States. Yet, despite all its grandeur, Conway Summit has resisted me.
I have spent expensive sheets of film, filled memory cards with endless digital captures, and still the mountain refused to yield. It is one of those places that looks far better in person than it ever does through the lens. My last image that truly stood out was back in 1985. Since then, I have carried the memory of that photograph like a talisman, returning again and again, waiting for the mountain to open itself once more.
This year, I made two trips in one day. The first was full of frustrations: sunlight too harsh, clouds drifting in all the wrong places, never hovering above the mountains where I needed them. All the usual disappointments that come with chasing light.
But by mid‑afternoon, something stirred deep inside me. I felt it in the intuitive part of my mind—the certainty that this was the time. A cloud bank was building to the west, rain came and went in bursts, and luminous mist drifted overhead, promising brilliance in the aspens. I drove up, and the moment I arrived, I knew. This was it.
I set up, made the exposure, and then quietly walked back to the car. No need for fuss or doubt. After forty years of waiting, I knew I had finally done it.
The Philosophy of Waiting
Photography has taught me that patience is not passive. It is an active form of listening, of attuning oneself to the rhythms of the land. Conway Summit reminded me that the mountain does not give itself away easily. It demands persistence, humility, and faith.
There is a lesson in that long wait: beauty cannot be forced. It arrives when it chooses, often after years of disappointment, and only when the photographer is ready to receive it. The camera is not the master of the scene—it is the witness.
When I look at the image now, I see not just aspens and clouds, but the arc of my own life woven into the frame. The decades of return visits, the countless failures, the quiet certainty of that afternoon—all of it is there. The photograph is not just a record of Conway Summit; it is a record of patience, persistence, and the mystery of timing.
