"What's a tarn?" you may ask. Nothing more than a pond in the mountains, often created by glaciers in the distant past. This particular tarn lies below the trail from Cottonwood Pass to Hidden Lake (another tarn, but more of a destination for hikers), at an elevation of about 12,000 feet. There's nothing particularly notable about it, other than it appears to be relatively untrammeled, it lies in a beautiful setting, and the lighting was particularly nice at the moment I photographed it. But there's really more to it than that, to me. I think there's a little bit of mystery about tarns. When hiking in mountains, they tend to remain hidden until you come upon them, or climb above them, because, of course, they lie in depressions. And there, suddenly, unexpectedly, among the rock and, often, snow, sits a lovely little body of water. In the rare event that the air is still, they reflect the surrounding mountains and sky, as if they're a passageway into a whole other world -- a hole in the earth, if you will. Just a little bit of mystery.