Keyan Bowes

This season is brilliant in Yosemite: Warm days, chilly nights, clear air. 

On a moonlight ride around the valley floor,  I discovered that my camera battery was flat. I'd carefully plugged it in the night before. I was so confident it was full I didn't bring my charger to Yosemite. Someone suggested I go round to the Ansel Adams Gallery, where they had all kinds of chargers. They did, but not one that worked for my camera.

So instead I bring you the pictures that I would have taken on a clear night with a waxing moon:

• The late-season river in cool night, with the stars reflected in the dark still water;
• The huge granite mountain, Half Dome, lit by the moon;
• The sheer cliff of El Capitan above us, starred with the lights of the climbers spending the night high on its walls;
• The valley, in shades of gray and white and black, lying before us from the Tunnel lookout;
• The tunnel on the Wawona mountain road, a half-circle of light, ending in a small half-circle of blackness.

And then the pictures from the next morning:

• Half Dome, fenced by spiky redwoods, reflected in the barely-rippling river;
• Two deer, cropping leaves and grass, ignoring a tourist passing before them;
• The back end of the two deer bounding away, startled, when the same tourist passed behind them;
• The alpen-glow on Half Dome at sunset, with the moon rising above its shoulder.

Of course it's quite possible that the actual pictures would not have been as lovely as the ones in my mind now - and I hope, in yours.
 
ETA:
And from our last day there: 

• The strange rocky wonderland of domes and boulders and peaks from Glacier Point.

But all was not entirely lost: My $8 disposable produced at least one of the pictures listed above:

(And no, Kater, I didn't take your suggestion - though I was tempted!)