Big Bear Alpine Pedal Path (Meadow Section)

Author's Comments

Most people ride the pedal path. I park near the Stanfield Marsh end and walk it instead, because the eastern section deserves a slower pace than a bicycle allows. The meadows here open out toward the lake in a way that feels almost accidental, as if the San Bernardinos had decided to leave one stretch unforested just to give you somewhere to stand and look. Dawn in late spring is when this place is at its strongest. The mist comes off the marsh in slow sheets and the peaks behind go from blue to pink to the pale gold that mountains do in the first ten minutes of real light. The birds are already at work by then. Osprey overhead, redwings in the cattails, and from late fall through early spring the bald eagles that draw people up here in winter. I have stood at the rail above the marsh and watched one fish for the better part of an hour, and the photograph I came home with was not of the eagle at all but of the water it had just left. The meadow rewards a wider lens than the marsh does. I tend to switch back and forth more than I should. What I have learned is to stop trying to choose, and to let the morning move through its phases. The mist burns off faster than you expect. By nine the light has gone ordinary and the mountains have flattened into postcard. Come early or do not bother. This is one of those places that gives you everything in the first hour and almost nothing after.

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