Echo Lake (Franconia Notch)

Author's Comments

There is a window at Echo Lake that opens just before sunrise and closes the moment the wind picks up. Maybe forty minutes. Sometimes less. In that window the lake goes glass and Cannon Mountain doubles itself, ridge for ridge, every notch and cliff face repeated below in water so still it stops feeling like water at all. I have been here in October when the maples on the lower slopes were going and the reflection held two versions of the same fire. I have been here in June when the cliffs were still wet from an overnight rain and the granite read almost blue in the early light. The lake is small enough that you can walk the whole shoreline in twenty minutes, which means you can scout three or four compositions before the light arrives and then pick the one that is working. The beach is the obvious vantage and it does not disappoint. But the trail along the eastern shore puts trees in the foreground and gives the mountain something to push against, which I find more honest than the postcard view. A wide lens for the full mirror. A slightly longer one for the cliff face alone, cropped tight where the reflection meets the real. Come at dawn. I cannot stress this enough. By nine the breeze comes up off the notch and the surface breaks, and what was a mirror becomes simply a pretty lake. Pretty is fine. But you did not drive to Franconia for pretty.

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