Fool Hollow Lake Recreation Area

Author's Comments

At 6,300 feet, the air at Fool Hollow has a clarity I rarely find at lower elevations in Arizona. The lake sits in a ring of ponderosa pine, and that combination of dark conifer and still water gives the place a northern feeling that surprises people who associate this state only with red rock and saguaro. I come up here in winter for the eagles. They overwinter on the lake, and on a cold January morning with the surface half frozen and a bird perched somewhere along the shoreline, this place feels closer to Montana than to Phoenix. The south shore is where I end my days. It opens west across the water with nothing in the way, and at golden hour the pines on the far bank go warm against a lake that holds the sky almost perfectly when the wind drops. Reflections here are honest reflections, not the mirror-still kind you have to wait hours for, but something closer to a soft double image that lets the trees and sky bleed into each other. Spring is the rookery. The great blue herons set up in the trees and the noise of them is part of the experience, not a distraction from it. I tend to stay back with a longer lens and let them work. This is not a dramatic park in the way the canyons of Arizona are dramatic. It is quieter than that, and it asks for a slower kind of attention. Come for an evening rather than an hour. Pay the day-use fee. Stay until the light goes.

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