Keeping Watch

The constellation Orion keeps watch over the ghost town of Gilman, a short drive away from Minturn, Colorado. It was about 3am when I headed back to where I was staying for the night. As I got off the interstate, I looked over to see Orion starting in the southern skies. So I headed towards it, knowing that the skies around this ghost town would be the ideal spot to capture my last image of the night. I avoided a mama and baby moose in near complete darkness on the nearly deserted Highway 24 and got to the town overlook just in time. if you look just over the top of the hill you can see Orion's belt, and the larger white "blob" just to the right, which is the Orion Nebula. In the top right, there's a green streak of a shooting star that I happened to grab in the frame, too.

Featured in the Summer 2024 issue of Vail Valley Magazine.