Heat colliding with cold shapes this vista – the hot thermal springs of Yellowstone breathing their mist into the chill of a last September dawn. The river itself runs around a curve at lower right, but it is the valley itself that takes star billing here. I use a row of pine trees as a screen in the middle left, their shapes echoing the plumes of steam. The huge hill behind this scene is covered with dead pine trees – a reminder of the real fire that swept through here in 1988. It is this interplay of live and dead trees, of make believe fire with the memory of real fire, that brings this vista to life in the imagination.