Reflecting on 2016, this image brings me back to several nights in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I believe that wilderness locations provide an essential balance to our hectic daily lives, and their solitude allows us to strengthen friendships and remember what is important. For me, it's tough to top wildflowers and alpine lakes.

Old gnarled trees are my favorite foreground for a milky way nightscape. Being among trees that have been standing longer than I have been alive, together bathing in photons which left their origin stars many millennia before humans came to the Americas, always fills me with a sense of peace and serenity.

I've selected this image as it has always been a location that I love and on this one evening I really appreciated the help I got from the rising crescent moon.