Long drives always feel like dreaming. You float along on the endless cushion of the road through the complex landscape, through the hills, the canyons, the trees, the openness. On the Colorado Plateau, it is always the quality of being held up right to the sun, as though examined beneath the massive dome of sky. This was a 1600 mile loop up around the entire Plateau in a week, to attend a meeting in Utah which was essentially just a good excuse to go exploring. The Plateau is this mythic landscape, with rock and views that could easily be described in the language of fantasy. It is a deeply affecting place that helps keep things in perspective.
These are a few images from out there.
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| The road behind me |
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| Houserock Valley, Kaibab Plateau, Arizona |
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| Looking down the Paria, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Utah |
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| Into the Paria |
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| Up the Paria, Utah |
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| Right... |
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| The Freeway goes where? |
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| Monument Basin, Canyonlands |
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| The Henrys with their Heads in the Clouds, Utah |
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| Seeing Mesa Arch |
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| Seeing Beyond |
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| On the Road to the Needles Overlook |
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| The overlook, a 1000 square mile view |
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| On the point |
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| On the corner of WTF |
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| The coming Storm |
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| The Storm, Monument Valley |
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| The Storm lifts |
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| Back home in the Borderlands |
Long drives offer a lot of time alone with your mind, tangling with the ever present now. There's the now, now, and now. The Dalai Lama once wrote "there are only two days you can do nothing about, yesterday and tomorrow."
1 comment:
Beautiful photos. Makes me want to be there right now, now, and now.
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