Whispers of Wind and Stone: Lake Alta in New Zealand's Southern Alps

The dawn’s chill scoured the face of Double Cone, a spectral hand clawing through the Southern Alps. Above Lake Alta’s emerald expanse, the mountain loomed—its flanks streaked with bleached remnants of snow, remnants that clung like old regrets. The wind, raw and bitter, swept down the slopes, threading itself through rock and scree, folding silence into a wild, keening song.

Clouds hung low, thick and bruised, their edges torn and frayed by relentless gusts. They shifted with a restless grace, momentarily splintering apart to release brief shards of sunlight. These fugitive glimmers lit the lake below—water so clear it seemed the bones of the earth had been left exposed. The surface rippled with uneasy color: deep green folding into steely blue, reflections shattered and remade, a liquid mirror forever unsettled.

The air itself felt ancient, weighted with something unspoken. Here, where stone meets sky, there was a sense of myth tangled in the wind’s teeth, a shiver of some old and distant grief. You could almost hear it—the faint echo of weary feet trudging through Tolkien’s dim-lit imagination. Dimrill Dale lay just beyond the veil, its shadow seeping into the crags, the specter of the Fellowship emerging, burdened and breathless. Their journey felt etched into the very stones—a passage written in exhaustion, in courage, in the cold, endless wind.

The lake held a frozen clarity, a clarity that seemed to scorn warmth. Beneath its wavering surface, shards of stone piled like forgotten memories, blurred yet sharp, brittle yet enduring. It was as if time had shattered here, its fragments preserved in perfect, unyielding stillness.

When light broke through—sharp and sudden—it struck the mountains like flint against steel, igniting a flare of impossible brilliance. For a moment, the land glimmered with an intensity that bordered on revelation, a brightness that almost hurt. And then it was gone, the clouds closing once more, the wind surging back to reclaim its territory.

In this place, breath was thin, vision was keen, and reality stretched itself taut. It whispered of thresholds, of boundaries unseen but felt—a world that teetered between memory and myth, where every gust of wind and ripple of water seemed to ask: What, after all, are you doing here?

And the mountains, inscrutable and unmoved, waited for an answer.

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To explore more of these captured moments and woven words, visit the artist and writer at their sanctuary of creation: www.coronaviking.com

Taken in: New Zealand / Otago / Frankton (show map)

Taken on: December 13, 2024

Tags:

mountains

lake

reflection

emerald water

moody

cloudy

lotr

new zealand

Southern Alps

Queenstown

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Sets appears in: • New Zealand - South Island

Groups appears in: • New Zealand ~ Aotearoa • Water... Oceans, Lakes, Rivers, Creeks more » • Landscape photography • FlickrToday (only 1 pic per day) • Nature Photography • Spiegelungen (reflections) • Beautiful Capture • THE BEST PICTURES OF REFLECTIONS • New Zealand Group(Anything taken in New Zealand) • New Zealand Geographic • Pure real and virtual works of art « less

Camera: Sony ILCE-7CR, f/7.1, 1/200 sec, 18mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony ILCE-7CR
Lens:	ZEISS Batis 2.8/18
Aperture:	f/7.1
Exposure Time:	0.005 sec (1/200)
Focal Length:	18mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Average
White Balance:	Auto
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 25.7 (Windows)
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