Bluff Lake Reserve

Author's Comments

Most people who come to Big Bear come for the lake, the obvious one, the busy one. Bluff Lake is the other answer. It sits at seventy five hundred feet on a meadow that does not announce itself, and you have to register in advance to walk in, which is part of why it stays the way it is. I came up in late September on a guided morning walk, expecting a pleasant detour and finding instead a place I have thought about ever since. The lake is shallow and still, more pond than lake, and the ponderosas around it stand tall enough that the reflection becomes the photograph. In fall the aspens and willows at the meadow edge go yellow against the pine green and the water doubles all of it. I worked slowly. The light moved across the meadow in a way that made me put the wide lens down and pick up something longer, then put that down too and just sit. The reserve protects a rubber boa population I will almost certainly never see, and a wildflower meadow that peaks earlier in summer than I caught it. I will go back for that. The restraint of the place, the registration, the small groups, the absence of a parking lot full of coolers, all of it adds up to something rare in the San Bernardinos. Come early. Come in the shoulder weeks when the aspens are turning. Do not expect drama. Expect quiet, and a reflection that is worth the drive up the mountain.

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