Old Rag Mountain

Author's Comments

There is no summit in this region quite like it. Not because the view is the tallest or the widest, but because the granite itself is part of the experience, and you feel that before you ever reach the top. The rock scramble below the summit is its own world, all compressed passages and handholds worn smooth by decades of palms, and if you slow down there instead of rushing through toward the panorama, you will find compositions that have nothing to do with distance or horizon. The summit when you reach it is bare and wide and honest. The Blue Ridge rolls away in every direction, ridge behind ridge going blue and then bluer, the kind of layered landscape that makes a long lens feel necessary and a wide lens feel inadequate. Neither is wrong. I have been up here in October when the color was full and loud and the sky was that particular hard blue that only comes after a cold front, and I have been up in early May when the trees below were still uncertain about spring. October gets the crowds it deserves. May is quieter and the light is gentler. If you are serious about the photograph, go before sunrise. The timed entry system means planning further ahead than feels reasonable, but the summit at first light, with nobody else on the granite, with the valley still in shadow and the ridges catching the first long horizontal light, is worth whatever it takes to get there. By nine o'clock the trails are busy and the moment is over.

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