Elk Bath

Elk in the Bitterroot River[1] is a wildlife photograph by John McColgan, a fire behavior analyst who worked for the Alaska Fire Service division of the Bureau of Land Management.

When NASA featured it in its online Astronomy Picture of the Day series, it was called Fire on Earth.

The image shows two Rocky Mountain elk seeking protection from a wildfire by standing in the river.

[5] McColgan took the photograph with a Kodak DC280 digital camera[6] while standing on a bridge at Sula, Montana over the East Fork of the Bitterroot River.

[7] The picture serves as the front cover art for Cass Sunstein's 2005 book of legal philosophy, Laws of Fear, which contains a caption that the picture's title, Elk Bath, may originate from.