There’s something special and scary and meditative about being out alone in the desert at night, the only available light to fall to the ground coming from the Milky Way’s vast distance. Throughout this project I’ve seen a number of creatures come out of the woodwork to eyeball me in the pitch black: rabbits, coyotes, desert rats, a bobcat, a king snake, bats, a fox. Never any that were to threatening (yet! knock on wood), but the encounters are almost always there throughout these nights.
On this particular evening, I kept hearing a rustling in the bushes not too far beyond this cluster of Joshua Trees awash in Milky Way subtlety, but didn’t get an appearance from any creatures. A few nights later I had a coyote eyeing me from 80 meters in this exact same spot; she was standing just before the rocky cliff of volcanic origin you see in the background. It’s honestly part of what makes astrophotography so much fun: these encounters with the flora, and the fauna, all bridged by the coming of night and the free light show from an ancient source in the heavens.