You know that I am primarily a b+w photographer. But the color of that water, though….

Maybe if you’re looking for something to read, you’d like River-Horse: a Voyage Across America, by William Least Heat-Moon. I read it, with an atlas at hand to follow the journey, when it was published in 1999. The day I made this image, I started to wonder if Heat-Moon had been along this part of the Snake River; it took me a couple of weeks after I got back to get around to finding the book on my crowded and unorganized book shelves, and I learned that he was indeed here. Here’s part of what he said, some of the loveliest words I’ve read in a while:

The shores rose steeply a few hundred feet into basins of basalt broken by fallen ramparts of volcanic crust and long ledges weathered into delicate traceries like petticoat hems or coarsely eaten into lacunas and strange shafts, the canyon virtually devoid of anything human but an empty rail line and impounded water.

– William Least Heat-Moon

along the Snake River, Washington
photographed 9.4.2020

PS: If you liked that quote from River-Horse, let me also recommend his books PrairyErth: A Deep Map and Blue Highways: A Journey Into America. (I read both of those with an atlas at hand, too.)