I visited Yosemite in late October 2022, near the end of a long, dry California autumn. The waterfalls were thin or dry, the crowds had thinned, and the valley had settled into something quieter than its summer spectacle.

What I found instead was a landscape of subtlety: morning fog caught between granite walls, the last warmth of autumn light on the Merced River, and a stillness that made the valley feel enormous in a different way. I spent several days working between the valley floor and the higher elevations, looking for the moments when the grandeur receded and something more personal came through.

Some of the ideas behind this work are explored in The Quiet Shape of Water, an essay on stillness and landscape in the Field Notes.