Sparks Lake with Mount Bachelor
— — the mountain laid flat on the water.
Not only on a wall.
“A shallow lake spread across a lava flow at the foot of Mount Bachelor, the volcano standing 9,068 feet to the south. On still mornings the cone doubles itself across the surface so cleanly the photographer Ray Atkeson came back here for fifty years to work the reflection. The water threads through black basalt islands and stands of lodgepole pine. The road in closes with the first heavy snow and reopens late spring. From the studio.
Sparks Lake with Mount Bachelor, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Sparks Lake sits at about 5,460 feet along the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway in Deschutes National Forest, roughly 26 miles southwest of Bend. The lake formed when a lava flow off the nearby Mount Bachelor volcanic complex blocked a small drainage; it is shallow, marshy at its edges, and partly drains away through cracks in the basalt by late summer. Mount Bachelor, the 9,068-foot stratovolcano to the south, dominates the southern skyline and is the most-photographed peak from the lake's north shore.
The Oregon photographer Ray Atkeson, named state photographer laureate in 1987, made Sparks Lake one of his lifelong subjects. The pull is the calm. Wind drops at dawn and again at last light, and on those windows the lake holds Bachelor as a clean inverted cone above its own reflection. The water is darkened by the basalt below and the reflection reads almost as a second mountain. The Ray Atkeson Memorial Trail at the north end is named for him.
Cascade Lakes Highway closes through the winter under deep snow, typically from November until late May or June. The summer window is short but reliable. July and August bring warm afternoons, paddleboarders, and the long evening light the lake is known for. By September the willows along the shore turn yellow and the air begins to bite at dawn. The lake holds trout and is managed by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife as a fly-fishing-only fishery.