Alpenglow is an optical phenomenon in which a horizontal reddish glow is observed on the horizon opposite to the sun.
Tuolumne Meadows, in the Eastern Sierra Nevada’s high country of Yosemite National Park, is the place to witness the amazing alpenglow at sunset. The phenomenon often lingers for several minutes after the sun has completely set, filling the sky with the ethereal orange-red glow.
Not only is alpenglow an amazing phenomenon, but John Muir described the Sierra Nevada Range as “The range of light.”
“Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the Range of Light.” — from The Yosemite (1912)
Hard to capture with anything other than the naked eye, there is something magical about the sunlit Glow reflected on the billions of pine needles that give off a light of their own.
Even the shining granite known as “glacial polish” adds the ethereal glow Muir described.
The Range of Light has infused inspiration into my soul since I walked these meadows in 1968 as an eight year-old. TWSchrandt
For earlier post on this subject visit, No Room, But There’s a View.
Pin or Flip Me!
I hope you enjoyed some light and inspiration from my backyard (wink)! Posted for the Weekly Photo Challenge “Glow.”
Second Wind Leisure Perspectives 
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