Beneath a Blaze of Borrowed Fire
Some evenings ask you to sit still and simply bear witness.
“Skyfire Archipelago” was made on one of those nights—when Lake Superior held its breath beneath a sky lit by distant wildfires and long-set geologic fire. Captured from the western edge of Silver Island, this photograph shows a chain of basaltic islands—low-slung, wave-washed, and ancient—bathed in the orange glow of sunset refracted through smoke from northern forests.
A Landscape Forged by Fire
These isles were born more than a billion years ago from the Midcontinent Rift, when lava spilled and cooled into hard stone. Glaciers came later, carving and them into today’s rugged archipelago. Beneath the water, the story continues in submerged ridges and kelp-like basalt ribbons.
Wind-worn black spruce take root in the cracks. Loons pass silently between rocks. Fish weave through the shoals. Life here is shaped by patience.
Why the Sky Was on Fire
On this particular evening, high-altitude smoke from wildfires hundreds and hundreds of miles away filtered the sunset. Fine particles in the upper atmosphere bent sunlight toward the red end of the spectrum, casting the sky in glowing tangerine and ember. The light didn’t belong to the Keweenaw—but it lent the land a brief, breathtaking radiance.
The Slow Reunion of Lava and Light
This image, at its core, captures what I think of as fire transformed by time. The basalt islands are lava slowed into stone—a billion-year-old memory of geologic upheaval. And the ember-colored sky? That’s sunlight, filtered through smoke from distant forest fires—its color deepened by particles suspended high in the atmosphere.
This is fire at its most patient: one form hardened into stone…the other, filtering the light through the sky.
For just a moment, they meet again—ancient earth and distant flame reflected in the stillness of Lake Superior.
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