National Parks
Portfolio

Cover

Contents

Foreword

Parks vs Monuments

Acadia

Bryce Canyon

Carlsbad Caverns

Crater Lake

General Grant

Glacier

Grand Canyon

Grand Teton

Hawaii

Hot Springs

Lassen Volcanic

Mesa Verde

Mount McKinley

Mount Rainier

Platt

Rocky Mountain

Seqoia

Wind Cave

Yellowstone

Yosemite

Zion

Monuments

National Parks Portfolio

Crater Lake

THE SUN PLAYS WONDERFUL TRICKS WITH LIGHTS AND SHADOWS
Photograph by Patterson

"THE SEA OF SILENCE"

NEARLY every visitor to Crater Lake, even the most prosaic, describes it as mysterious. To those who have not seen it, the adjective is difficult to analyze, but the fact remains.

The explanation may lie in Crater Lake's remarkable color scheme. The infinite range of grays, silvers, and pearls in the carved and fretted lava walls, the glinting white of occasional snow patches, the olives and pine greens of woods and mosses, the vivid, cloud-flecked azure of the sky, and the lake's thousand shades of blue, from the brilliant turquoise of its edges to the black blue of its depths of deepest shadow, strike into silence the least impressionable observers. "The Sea of Silence," Joaquin Miller calls Crater Lake.

With changing conditions of sun and air, this amazing spectacle changes key with the passing hours; and it is hard to say which is its most rapturous condition of beauty, that of cloudless sunshine or that of twilight shadow; or of what intermediate degree, or of storm or of shower or of moonlight or of starlight. At times the scene changes magically while you watch.

EVENING SHADOWS
Photograph by Patterson

Continued >>>

Last Modified: Mon, Oct 31, 2002 10:00:00 pm PDT
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