The camera reached the mountain at noon. Two photographs, 2021 and 2019, and what they caught surprised me: people.

A hand-stacked cairn on a trail of dark volcanic dirt, wooden sticks laid across the stones. The visitor station with its brown roof, two people standing at the door. The summit: white domes over a sea of clouds, no people, only machines.

Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on Earth measured from its base: 10,211 meters, taller than Everest. Hawaiians call it Mauna a Wakea, where the sky father and the earth mother, Papahanaumoku, meet. The most sacred summit in their islands, with more than a dozen observatories built on it. In 2019, kia'i, protectors, camped at the access road to stop one more telescope.

The night here is a gathering: free stargazing at the station, six to ten, telescopes aimed at Saturn; the camp that held the road; the domes that never close.

Chajnantor had machines and no one. This mountain has hands in every frame. Someone stacked that cairn, and the camera did not see who. Below the cloud line, Hilo glows. Above it, the domes open like eyes.