Surrounding southwestern Washington State’s Mt. Rainier, the high country has been shaped by volcanoes and glaciers. A moraine deposited by an ice flow 11,000 years ago created a dam that formed Little Tipsoo Lake, now a shallow lagoon. Its name is derived from the Chinook language. Throughout Cascadia, “tupso” is used to modify words that describe prairies, meadows, grasses, flowers, and sometimes even hair, all of which aptly describe this stunning meadow. In this photograph, a clump of bunchgrass in the lake looks like a hairpiece for Mt. Rainier’s summit.

Grasses, reeds, and lush fields of wildflowers and berries surround the lake, including huckleberry, lupine, Indian paintbrush, and partridgefoot. Ridges and peaks of the northern Cascade Mountains surround and overshadow the meadow. On their slopes and around the lake are subalpine forests of spruce, rock glaciers, and perennial snowfields. During summer, the lake fills, and although it is fed by snowmelt, it can warm to 70 degrees by August. As summer wanes, the lake shrinks, and during winter, its mile-high elevation is buried under snow drifts as deep as 65 feet until it melts away by mid-July.

At dawn, on the right side of the photograph, is craggy Yakima Peak. During September, the brush and grasses on its south side turn amber, with yellow sagebrush flowers blending with reddish-brown bitterbrush leaves. In the distance, 14,400-foot Mount Rainier dominates the horizon, its peak rising above the gray, corrugated ridge of the Cowlitz Chimneys, a rugged maze of volcanic pinnacles, spires, and knobs.