Tag Archives: canyons

Moonlight Over Canyonlands

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2016-04-02DesertMoonlight0651

Moonlight can do strange and wondrous things if you’re lucky enough to be down in the bottom of the canyons under a full moon. The small ravines and gully’s that filter down to the canyon bottom are filled up with the many different grasses that grow here because this is where the water is when there is any.

During the daylight hours these same grasses will appear colorless and faded due to the relentless beating of the sun, but at night when the moon comes out and shines its silvery light on these pockets of splendor they glow with an earthly luminance that equals the best lit studio. Nothing beats Mother Nature when she wants to show off her handiwork.

This vignette was found at the bottom of an unnamed canyon in Canyonlands National Park earlier one evening as the walls blocked the last of the daylight and the full moon rose early. There wasn’t time for setting up a formal shot as the dark was closing in and there was a hair-raising drive to climb out of the canyon before full darkness fell.

So a couple of grab shots taken out of the vehicle window were all there was time for, in fact only two images were taken, but that is often how these things happen. You see beauty, you snap the shutter and you move on. That brief moment lives on in this image for as long as people want to look at it. Which I hope is a long time.

We Don’t Do Nothing Nice And Easy

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2015-11-23Grand Canyon 5806

There are lots of canyons where they are mainly long stretched-out holes in the ground with no tops that primarily serve as a big ditch. They occasionally have a small fizzly amount of water run through them and call themselves mighty. People fall off the edge and they call themselves dangerous. A little dirt falls off their edges and is slowly carried away and they call themselves deepest. When they have a small storm pass over they call themselves dramatic. To some who have never seen a real canyon this appears to be a source of wonderment. They call them canyons.

But there are canyons and there are canyons. This is the Grand Canyon. The Grandmother of all canyons. If the perfect storm were created out of the earth instead of water it would take hundreds of them to create this canyon. Maybe thousands. When something happens here it happens on a colossal scale. Storms are bigger, deeper, higher, stronger. They contain more rain, more lightning, more power. The river that flows through it is one of the most powerful on the planet. Enough earth flows through this canyon, carried along by the strength of its movement, to form a new country.

When all those events happen at the same time we usually call that Wednesday. Where other smaller canyons do their utmost to appear mighty there is no comparison. This is the Grand Canyon, the mightiest canyon in all the world. If you thought these smaller canyons had drama they are the smallest eyelash flick of this grand old dame. Some say sixteen year old girls are the epitome of drama. Take all the sixteen year old girls alive today and all that have ever lived and their combined drama wouldn’t leave an echo in this canyon.

When something happens here it changes the world we live in. Storms, floods, rapids, waterfalls, entire counties of earth falling into the Colorado river at a time. This is the daily life of the canyon. At the Grand Canyon, we don’t do nothing nice and easy.

I Hear The Canyons Calling

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2015-09-09Zion3048

I hear the canyons calling

They softly call my name

Come to me they say

Feel the coolness on your skin

Hear the water falling, falling

As you stand in my shadows

As so many have before

Listen as the birds sing my chorus

And the wind carries it away

You need me the canyon says

It’s true, it’s true I know

I hear the canyons calling as

It’s time and I must go

Sandfall

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SandFall4734

The Southwest is full of amazing places where the unusual is the norm. This happens to be Antelope canyon and I’m sure you’ve all seen the images of it’s incredible colors and fantastic light beams shining down onto the canyon floor. There are two canyons, the lower where you climb down into the slot canyon and after traveling through it climb back out again and the upper where you walk through it by entering at ground level and continuing through until you walk out the other end. This is the upper canyon and normally there would be light streaming down from the narrow opening in the ceiling of the canyon a hundred feet or more over your head, but on very special occasions when the conditions are just right you get this view, sand, fine as flour sifting down from the dune on the surface when the wind conditions are perfect. It slowly fills the shallow depressions in the rock face until they overflow and you have Sandfall. This not a rare occurrence but it is uncommon as the wind has to be blowing just right, too much  and it blows the sand over the opening and it doesn’t fall in, too slow and the sand doesn’t move at all, and when the wind stops the Sandfall stops. When everything works and it happens and you’re there to see it, it feels like a miracle. Sandfall at Antelope canyon catch it if you can.