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Mountain Sky on Fire

This photo came from a bad thing that turned into a good thing. 

I've been a single mom since my daughter was two-years-old. When she was four, we divorced. We were still on pretty good terms and neither of us wanted to spend the money for lawyers, so I looked up how to do it myself. Though I'm still glad we did it that way, there was one area I should have taken someone else's advice before finalizing.

It was about child support. 

I put a low minimum, because my soon-to-be ex-husband didn't make much and I didn't include any penalties for non-payment. When he stopped paying, I thought I had to go to court to make him pay and I knew he didn't have it, so what was the use in trying?

I did keep a ledger with all that he should have paid and didn't.

Years passed. Occasionally, he would give me some money towards raising our daughter but mostly it was all one me.

Then many years later, when my daughter was in college, I talked to a financial advisor. He suggested I do two things - one being to go after him for the back child support he owed (to the tune of about $35,000).

By this point, I had moved back to my hometown so I did everything long distance. That is, until the court date. There wasn't a Zoom option like there is in some courts. My boyfriend-at-the-time/now-husband and I made arrangements to drive back up to East Tennessee for the hearing.

While we were there (we won, by the way), we wanted to get into the mountains at least once. We chose to go to Newfound Gap and from there to Clingman's Dome in the Smoky Mountains. I have been to Clingman's Dome countless times throughout my life - it was my boyfriend's first time.

In case you aren't familiar with Clingman's Dome, there's a semi-steep paved trail about a half a mile long to get to the "dome." However, it's really not a dome. Basically the sidewalk leads to a concrete pedestrian bridge that leads to an observation tower. This is the highest point in Tennessee and has a 360-degree view of the mountains. 

I have back issues and they were flaring up the day we went. When we got there, as much as I wanted to go with my boyfriend to the top, I knew I couldn't make it. So he went alone.

While he was gone, I had my camera and there were still a lot of scenery that I could capture photos of surrounding the parking lot. I played with settings and focus points and different angles - doing all of the things I usually can't take the time to do. 

When he came back down, it was almost time for the sun to set. The Smokies were, well, smoky and there was a lot of fog/cloud cover. He noticed it first... there was fog rolling down the mountain. It was basically a cloud traveling down to the parking lot, over it and then it moved out to the mountains and valleys of that area.

This was just a precursor for the incredible event to come.

After watching the cloud move on to other mountaintops, the sun had begun to drop and the colors of the sunset started to intensify. We both got in position to shoot the sunset in all its glory.

But then the sunset did something I've also never seen before. The colors came through the thick clouds and looked like the mountain was on fire. I've never seen such an intense display of color from that point. 

Because I had been exploring that area for a while before the sunset, I knew where I needed to stand to place the sun exactly between two trees. The gallery photo was chosen because I loved the different colors (it was mid-sunset), the bottom two images are where it started and ended. 

                                                      (All images by Tracy Riggs Frontz)

    

                                         


All of the images above are available to order as custom prints, fulfilled by a professional lab, at https://NovelPhotos.Instaproofs.com.

If you don’t have time to order today, feel free to take a business card and order later using the middle QR code. The photos will be under “Trussville Library Gallery.”

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If you want any hand-signed, get in touch with us before ordering. We can direct you to a gallery that doesn't have our digital signatures on them and we can work out what works best for you to get the signature you want.

To order a signed copy of Tracy’s book: Behind the Lens of a Storyteller – My Journey as a Photographer/Writer, go to https://NovelPhotos.instaproofs.com/BehindtheLens Note that shipping is included – be sure to use the coupon code “SHIPPINGINCLUDED.”

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