Fires are to be expected out West, where lighting and wind set off enough to keep firefighters busy all summer. Add the human factor, and it quickly becomes unmanageable. So it wasn’t a big surprise, but it was a huge disappointment, that the day we’d scheduled our trip to Crater Lake was also a day when forest fires had broken out west of the park several days before. Even though they were now contained, the remainder of their smoke was hovering over the water of Crater Lake, captured by the caldera that made it very difficult for it to dissipate.

I’d been to Crater Lake about fifty years ago when I was a teenager, and I saw it then in my own self-induced haze of dramamine druggedness, so I was looking forward very much to a clear view of the deep blue water contrasting the crisp greenness of the surrounding forests. Every photo you see of Crater Lake shouts of this reality. Instead, we were greeted with a mystical view of ghosts of trees on Wizard Island that rose in the middle of the crater, an after-thought eruption, now a volcano within a volcano. Shadowy speedboats zipped through the water like water-striders moving in and out of the low-hanging clouds of smoke. It was a unique and rather satisfying experience.

I’ll have to return one more time to see the Crater Lake of my fantasies. There was a saving grace to the day, however. Earlier in the day, we had stopped at Burnley Falls and happened to catch it at one of the rare times of day when the sun was on the waterfalls. They are some of the loveliest falls I’ve ever seen, tumbling at several places along a tall cliff sprinkled with greenery in a haphazard manner. It was one of those sights we weren’t even aware of and couldn’t have planned for, but an encouraging nudge from a general store clerk spurred us to explore. It was a treasure of a find.

Burnley Falls