Photographic detours can be wonderful adventures. Bonnie and I left the quiet town of Salida, Colorado on our way to the airport in Denver, having decided to follow the Arkansas River to its headwater streams north of Leadville. Then on the spur of the moment, we decided to take old US 6 across Loveland Pass. A mere 10′ shy of an even 12,000′, Loveland sits astride the Continental Divide along the Front Range. Looking south and southeast across a field of mountain lupine (Lupinus argenteus), we could follow the line of the Divide across the mountains to the rocky face of Grizzly Peak as the light played hopscotch across the slopes.

A focal length of 26mm, mid-wideangleland, gave me the angle-of-view I wanted. An aperture of f/20 provided depth-of-field, and a shutter speed of 1/5th second at ISO 100 gave me an overall medium exposure.

Once again I am reminded of Gibran’s beautiful words: “Verily all things move within your being in constant half-embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light. And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter to a greater freedom.” ~Kahlil Gibran~