Vanishing Point

The ebbing tide exposes extensive mud flats twice each day in Turnagain Arm, only a few miles off the coast Anchorage. The extreme scale of the view I find out there while flying in my helicopter is hard to grasp. Point Possession­—the uninhabited northwest tip of the Kenai Peninsula—forms a dark line only about ten miles from the location of this image. But the massif of Mount Spurr volcano and the rugged Aleutian Range loom over a horizon 70 to 100 miles further west. This vast, unbroken vista is both humbling and exhilarating.