Scenes from heaven

When a person first sees Mount McKinley and the neighboring peaks of the Alaska Range it is difficult not to be impressed. Occasionally, a person's impression of Denali evolves until the mountain becomes a focal point in their life.

Lately, it seems that climbers and pilots have made up the majority of the obsessives, but over the years artists such as Sydney Laurence and artist/climbers such as Bradford Washburn have been able to simultaneously claim the mountain as their own and share it with the rest of us.

Put Norio Matsumoto in that latter group. This year was his third winter of camping in the Alaska Range, waiting patiently for an image he calls "The Shot." The Shot is Mount McKinley's peak by moonlight with the aurora borealis overhead.

Artificially, this could be done rather quickly with a computer or even a well-equipped darkroom, but Matsumoto is willing to wait for The Shot and capture it for real.

This winter he spent 102 days camping in the Alaska Range. He split his time between a

camp on the Kahiltna Glacier a few miles down slope from the popular climbers' base camp and a camp on Whistler Glacier. Both camps were chosen for their view of Denali's summit.

Getting the perfect opportunity to photograph the northern lights can be a waiting game in itself, but Matsumoto was willing to spend the time to capture a perfect image.

"I was on Whistler 27 days -- I could only use the camera two days," Matsumoto said.

Matsumoto was born and raised on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four major islands. He fell for Alaska as a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and later in Juneau, where he earned a bachelor's degree.

"That was really just a way to stay in Alaska." he said.

He turned 30 on the Kahiltna glacier this year, waiting for the moon to light the mountains and the aurora to come out, alone with his camp supplies, his camera, a lunar calendar, a journal and some books.

Most of what he reads in camp are collections of short nonfiction essays in Japanese. Travel and baseball are two favorite subjects. Matsumoto said that on his first winter trip to Denali he brought only books by Buddhist theologians-- but he doesn't recommend such soul searching for other travelers.

"I thought I was going to have a lot of time to look into self," he said with a laugh. "But in a place like that you want to read something fun."