Embers on the Water, Acadia

I returned at first light to a quiet pond in Acadia, unsure what I might find, only knowing the season was shifting and the park was briefly empty. When the sun struck the hillside, the trees ignited in color, and their reflections spilled across the water, breaking into layers that felt almost dreamlike. What I saw was less a landscape than a quiet abstraction, a moment of wildness that changed how I was seeing. Standing there, I felt I was witnessing a private unveiling, a moment when the land revealed a more mysterious self.