Through a Drone, Darkly

The morning light reveals many things, but the nighttime has so much that can be seen as well, if I can only look in the right way, at the right time, and in the right place! To my imagination, what I’m seeing in the photograph below could be The Lost City of Opar from Tarzan’s adventures that first appeared in 1916, or it could be the tower of Greater Helium from the “Martian” adventures by the same author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who first published “Under the Moons of Mars” in 1912.

But what I’m seeing is none of those mysteries, just a plain ol’ medium-security penitentiary called variously DCI Englewood or FCI Englewood (or both, depending on the installation). Transformed by the darkness and the peculiar refraction of the lens to bright objects in the dim light before sunrise, the lights offer a transformation of the environment, from the ordinary into the unexplained.

This week saw me riding my bike about six miles through the dark to get to Hutchinson Park to take some photographs of the Colorado HIGH SKY, only to follow up two days later with a much shorter ride. After both rides, I ended up picking “goats heads” out of my shoes and bicycle tires, with Summer here in full swing.

The source of light itself can be shrouded in darkness, thanks to the adjustable iris in the camera lens. Also, as color and light are both relative, different settings, like the “gamut” of the color, can fundamentally alter the photographs long after the event was captured in pixels.

Both days I was almost the only person out in the parks before sunrise. However, both times I saw just one other out in the dark, each with the company of a canine! More eventually will follow later in the morning, as the summertime’s sunrises come earlier. More groups with their pups are likely to follow at the later sunrises in the Fall, if the past is any guide.

I shouldn’t forget that I’m not really alone, after all. I mean, there are always insects—something else that has to be endured for the season. I have only one bite from a recent outing, so the birds and other predators have been busy at work “reducing” the mosquito population, I imagine.

The drones fly high enough to avoid early birds, but some early pilots are looking for similar vistas.

There is a flight path above Bear Creek, visited weekly by the Colorado Air National Guard on routine flights from Granby to Buckley (formerly an ANG base). General aviators also fly above and around Green Mountain, but not as much in Bear Valley.

There used to be hang-gliders operating commercially in the area, but I haven’t seen one in years. Maybe, decades? It’s even been a few years since I’ve seen a motorized paraglider, or paramotor. The one I’d seen had a tricycle wheel-base and probably took off from a city street in this area or in Rooney Valley to the west.

Sadly, I read that it was in a paramotor accident that Felix Baumgardner recently lost his life. He held the record for breaking the speed of sound in freefall, and the record in the highest skydive from the edge of space. Paramotors are considered some of the safest vehicles, but I don’t know what had happened to an accomplished and awarded test pilot. May his memory be an inspiring blessing!

The smoky and cloudy sunrises contributed to the colors of the dawn. And with the sunrise, the tardy birds had finally joined the early ones. Riding home along the trail in the warmth and light of the risen sun is a different experience than riding out in the dark. For the first time I experienced a truly dark start to my ride, as all the exterior lights of my apartment building had been removed the day before and not immediately replaced. My bike’s headlight was enough to get me out of my home, of course, but I would have been stumbling in the dark without it.

Thanks for reading my ponderings on light and darkness all the way to the end!