I first visited Carter Caves State Resort Park in the autumn of 2019. Located in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, it features numerous natural arches, the rare mountain maple, and limestone caves. I returned several times over the years to photograph, but this one spot—in the climbing section just off the Three Arches Trail—was to be my muse. This singular yellow poplar, the state tree of Kentucky, rises straight along a sandstone cliff, streaked with lichen. I’ve photographed it both in color and in black and white. It holds in my memory a number of sojourns here: the time I came with an artist I was dating, a winter I came alone and explored among the iced-over cliffs, and when I brought my daughter to visit the caves in November of 2022 when, in addition to touring the caves, we saw the lunar eclipse from the porch of our room at the lodge. As for the image itself, it was worked on heavily in the darkroom, using contrast masking techniques to create that glow around the tree that the lichen shaped.