A giant punch bowl sparkling in the mid-day sun lies before me. Drawing my eyes like a magnet into the depths of a watery sapphire, this jewel creates a setting for Wizard Island as it rises from the lake’s core, where she sits like a mother hen with her chicks, protecting her adjacent islands. Forest green conifers cloak the islands and circle their way to the top of the cone-shaped Wizard. A gray ridge echoes memories of falling rock, trees and mud. 

Now sparsely treed, the devastation of the slide is all but forgotten. The foreground, like a moonscape, lies jagged and gray. A lone weed struggles for life in the parched soil. What appears as mountains in the background is the crater’s rim: Ragged peaks buried in blue. Beyond the rim, a single mountain majestically raises her head to the heavens. Like a giant snow cone, her white  crown shines in the mid-day sun. Powder-puff clouds play in a baby-blue sky over Crater Lake, Oregon.

If you'd like to email Dee, she'd love to hear from you: dee37@telus.net

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