Yes indeedy, I went for a 2 hour hike in the moonlight last night, above Sun Valley, and I think I'm going again. The light -- well, it wasn't quite bright enough to read a book by, but the snow-covered hills, dreaming above the quiet town....
Sun Valley has a "night dark" ordinance, and there was no wind, only the squeak of my snowshoes as I went. (image source: Dave Bell)
I know some of you haven't been out-of-doors in the dark, and may find it a frightening thought. But this is a place so safe....I was hoping to see a fox or a coyote (both frequent the hiking trail area) but nothing was stirring. The hills above Ketchum are for the most part sagebrush covered, not forested as here, but this image captures how clearly you can see.
The camera's reproduction is not quite what I saw...the shadows more blue, the snow more glistening white.
(Image Source: Alaska 
)
The image below is one of my all-time favorite Remington paintings, The Scout: Friend or Foes? The rider, peering through the tricky light, so visible himself on the light that clear... the painting captures the clarity and the
confusion that a full moon on a field of snow can offer.
These tentative first experiments in nocturnal
images incorporate, as Anderson puts it, "the qualities that [came] to
distinguish the mature nocturnes: incomplete narrative, unseen danger,
ominous silence and threatening darkness. Rather than answer questions
(as Remington's illustrations often did), the late nocturnes pose
questions."
In "The Scout: Friend or Foes?" (1902-05), for example, an Indian peers from horseback toward low, flat structures on the horizon, uncertain whether they represent friends or foes. The possibility of danger ahead, albeit so far unseen, adds to the drama of the image.
(The original image is at the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Massachusetts)
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