A year ago, Harney Basin, and the Steens Mountain wilderness it contains, was ablaze from a two month onslaught of wildfires. By August, a thick ring of smoke extended over two hundred miles from Burns, Oregon, to the California border and beyond. I delayed a trip to the Steens until September, hoping the smoke would clear. It didn’t. When I finally reached the summit, the night sky closest to the horizon looked like it was coated in soot.
This year I tried again.
Assignment: Milky Way Photography.
Location: Wildhorse Lake, located in a rocky cairn just below Steens Mountain summit.
Highlights: I picked the August night of a new moon to guarantee the darkest possible sky in one of the darkest locations in the country, over 70 miles from Burns, Oregon, the nearest town. At almost 10,000 feet in altitude, the thin air on Steens Mountain promised the clarity I needed to resolve the delicate features and color of the Milky Way.
But the window of opportunity for a photograph was short. The Milky Way would take just minutes to transit Wild Horse Lake. In that time, banks of clouds close to the horizon could quickly move in or out of the camera frame, obscuring the brightest part of the Milky Way. I was lucky. On the first of two nights I was on the mountain, the transit happened in clear skies; on the second night it clouded up as a thunderstorm moved into the Steens.
The results from the first night’s photography, safely locked into about 80 high resolution exposures, would be combined in software called a “stacker”, a program able to remove unwanted color artifacts and “noise” from a composited image. In that image, the gem-like center of the Milky Way emerged in shimmering colors, embracing Wildhorse Lake like a fossil in amber.
It rained on the third day, as I left the Steens Wilderness. On the long drive home, passing through Sisters, I found myself in the middle of the Flat Fire as it grew to 22,000 acres, spreading a blanket of smoke over central Oregon.
The summer of clear skies had ended.
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