The next monthly pilgrimage is locked in, and this one feels like a slow burn toward some kind of cosmic showdown. Trillium Lake. Mount Hood. Oregon’s crown jewel rising like a cold-eyed titan above the pines, watching every poor wanderer who dares point a lens in its direction. Toward the end of the month we’ll drag ourselves back into the high country, boots on, packs loaded, cameras armed like strange mechanical prayer wheels spinning in the thin air.

There’s a particular electricity in planning a trip to Hood. Not chaos. Not madness. Something stranger an undercurrent. Like the whole place is running on ancient voltage humming beneath the ice and volcanic stone. Trillium Lake reflects that mountain so perfectly it feels wrong, as if nature itself is showing off, flexing a mirror big enough to swallow us whole. A place where the world gets suspiciously quiet, and every ripple on the water feels like a message from something older than languages.

We’ll get there early, chasing that first light that spills over the summit like someone cracked open the sky with a crowbar. Frost on the boardwalk. Camera shutters warming up like nervous trigger fingers. Coffee strong enough to wake the dead. And the eternal hope of catching that perfect reflection: Mount Hood sitting still, the lake glassy and obedient, the world balanced for one exact second before the wind decides to ruin everything.

That’s the game. That’s the thrill. The pursuit of the impossible moment where the mountain stops pretending to be a postcard and reveals itself as the raw, towering brute it truly is.

And Gods help us if the fog rolls in, because then it’s a whole different creature. The lake turns into a floating dreamscape. Hood becomes a rumor. Every tree looks like it’s hiding a secret. It’s the kind of atmosphere that crawls into your bloodstream and reminds you why you carry a camera in the first place.

This month’s dispatch will be a pilgrimage to the mountain, a brief attempt to bottle a little piece of the divine chaos that keeps pulling us back out into the woods. Trillium Lake at our feet, Mount Hood above our heads, and the thin line of our own sanity somewhere in the middle.

Toward the end of the month, we go.

And the mountain will be waiting.