When the mountain is out

It's one of the amazing things about living in Seattle: you go for months without seeing Mount Rainier, forget it's even there, and then one day the air clears, the gray dissipates, and suddenly there it is again, floating in the clouds above the city as if it had never left.

The majesty of it all is simply breathtaking, and I don't know anyone who doesn't feel a little leap of the heart when the mountain is out. So when a friend called yesterday afternoon to say the mountain was glowing pink in the sunset I grabbed my camera and headed down to the park to capture what I could. 

Though the colors in these images are intense (no, I didn't do anything to enhance them), the composition is pretty boring. But they do capture the mountain, and the moment. And that's enough, really: sometimes it's not about the photo, it's about the subject; not about what I can create, but about what has been created, long before I ever arrived here; about what will continue to humble and inspire us long after I've gone. 

It's times like this, when the photo itself is just incidental, when I realize again the truth of Eckhart Tolle's words: "The purpose of all art is to serve as a portal to the sacred."  In cases like this, I don't need to contribute much. What matters is the magnificence of creation; I just get to share it with you.