There is a special event that happens just twice a year in one of the most spectacular places on earth. That place is Monument Valley located on the border of Utah and Arizona and watched over by the Navajo people. Towards the end of March and the end of September the sun sets at just the right spot on the horizon to cause the shadow of the Mitten on the left to be cast upon the center of the mitten on the right. If you are particularly lucky, and who isn’t, there won’t be a cloud in the sky and the full spectrum of colors will display. As you head into sunset the colors shift into the reds and get deeper and richer until you think it can’t get any more beautiful. You get a sense of how quickly the sun drops down behind the ridges to the west and how short the sunset is as suddenly the scene goes from being brilliantly lit to deepening into the dark of early evening. It would not be unreasonable at this time to demand that the sunset last for at least an hour or so. The colors which were so intense moments before morph into deep shadows and the show is over for the night.

 This process of the shadow being cast starts several days before the finale and last for several days after but is different from the centering because the shadow doesn’t line up on the center of the right mitten until the one day in the middle when all of the conditions are perfect. What makes it imperfect, if that is even possible in this place, is the shadow drifts off to either side of the right mitten and is only partially formed depending on whether you’re at the beginning of the cycle or the end. If you happen to miss the centering don’t feel bad, just being in this truly incredible place will be one of your greatest experiences.