The Caldera at First Light
A pre-dawn scramble to the rim, and the long exposure that finally held still.
The alarm went at three. By four we were picking our way up loose scree in head-torch light, the rim somewhere above us in the dark, the whole point of the trip resting on a sky we couldn’t yet see.
It held. For one clean hour the wind dropped and the water went to glass, and the long exposure I’d been chasing for two years finally sat still long enough to keep.
