We wake up in the middle of the night, just after the moon has set, and put on thick down coats against the thin cold of the mountain air. We’re camped at the bottom of a granite cirque just beside the lake, and the entire bowl glows a soft silver. It’s not the light of our headlamps or the moon, but in the pitch black of the night above we see it bold, striated, structured: the Milky Way buttressing the heavens from one end of the dome to the other.