Should've Known Better

Driving and camping around Moab, Sufjan's Carrie and Lowell became our soundtrack for the trip.  It started with my friend humming Sufjan in the kitchen before we left.  This quickly turned into playing his album more than three times along the red dusty roads of the canyons of Utah.  We also created our own narrative along with the tune:

Should've staked my tent down
before the storm came in...

...Lightning strike
Nothing can be changed
the past is in the past
My tent is up in flames...

...Illumination...

We only lost a canopy.  Thanks to the kindness of our camping neighbors, my tent was held down with rocks they had put in it after they had seen it blow away.  They saved our canopy canvas, but the bars were crushed by the wind.

Michael crushing the remains, so we can put it in the car. 

This storm had come in quickly.  Just as the light from the sunset was fading out on Delicate Arch, a strong gust of wind stormed in from the Northwest.  Thunder boomed and a stroke of lightning shot across the sky.  I called to my friends and we began running down the bald rock ridge as lightning shot above us from time to time.

"We've gotta get off this ridge!  Go, go, go!"

"Where's the fire?" said the people we sped passed, strolling down the mountain.

All I could think of was (1) Get off the ridge (2) Take lightning position.  Luckily, we had a car to drive us out of there.  Off went we drove, through the raging winds and rain above us, the sky lit up by daggers of electricity.

Right before things got crazy.

The next day we decided to take the scenic route to Canyonlands.  Luckily, I pictured a relaxing photogenic drive and not this terrifying footpath of a road.

Assumptions can protect you from worry without you realizing.

Four wheel drive was encouraged on the sign, but we continued forward in our Toyota Camry.  Rough gravel and potholes seemed a bit precarious but we kept driving.  The road continued to gain elevation and soon we were teetering on the skinniest red muddy road, clinging to the sides of the canyon walls.  We had been warned about an area where there was "rock and road, and it was steep" according to a person we had stopped along the way.  But he encouraged us saying, "But I've seen people make it!"

Oh good.

A tiny road of switchbacks brought us out of the canyon, while Billy Holiday and other jazz tunes played on - except for the last part, where silence seemed the only tune we could embrace.  Meanwhile, we prayed to God that our car would make it (the entire time).  My fear kept me from taking photos or videos.  Two hours later, we made it to Dead Horse point - alive (!) - where the sun was shining and we could take a look at the dark canyon road we had just traversed.

Along the switchbacks, in the car.

There's our road!

Canyonlands

We were able to enjoy a bit of a sunset, though it didn't light up the rocks as it did the night before.  The light is able to change everything, making dark canyons beautiful.

Back we drove to Salt Lake City, where we slept like the rocks we had just seen.

Thank you, Moab.

The Great Salt Lake

Down the Street

"As you say, I knew I wanted to make a change from the previous urban landscape work I'd been doing, and I was keen for a new kind of challenge. I'd been curious about forests for a variety of reasons: their importance as linchpins of biodiversity, the role that their destruction has played in species extinction, and the magnificent way that vast, lush, unpeopled stretches of wilderness can remind us that life extends beyond the world of human development and time, and that that is, in fact, the point from whence human life evolved.

Robert Adams once said that what photographers are often doing is trying to find a good example of something they already know. That is one of the essential tasks of photography: to recognize those salient facts which can become a vehicle for metaphor.

That's my ambition right now. To take what I've learned as a photographer and a human being, and see how much of that I can put in to pictures. It's a great challenge.

Richard Rothman Stanley, Ahorn Magazine

Salt Lake City. Dry, hot, hilly, and hot-pressed into the mountains like a panini. I could fry an egg on the sidewalk or pavement, but I haven't tried. The sun bakes my whole body when I move around the city, yet in the shade I can sport a sweater and pants. When my sweat mixes with my dry hair, it gives it that I-just-swam-in-the-ocean soft stiffness that crunches when I try to put my fingers through it. My eyes are dry and I drink five gallons of water a day plus a drink or two. A cool breeze is blowing just now and the air feels absolutely weightless.

The grass in front of me is green because a lawn sprinkler waters it for an hour each night. In the back it's all dried up and looks like Mexico. I am sitting on the porch of a house on a street with a 90 degree incline. Descending it on my bicycle was terrifying. There is a Vespa in the driveway that is still waiting for me to ride it, which I WILL do once I work up the courage.

I met two gold diggers from Nevada at the local brewery last night. That's right - Nevada, and yes - geologists who ACTUALLY search for gold, send it to refineries, and have it turned into whatever people want it to be. They had already had a bottle of Jim Beam before the bar and were headed to a concert. They insisted we go, but we were already headed to see The National, who played in the park for five freakin dollars. Sitting on my friend's husband's shoulders for the last song was thrilling. It was my third time seeing The National, not particularly intentionally - he just always seems to show up whenever I'm travelling. Once in Santiago, Chile, then in Providence, and now in Salt Lake City. He feels almost like my musical, troubled, alcoholic traveling companion.

Does America realize that Utah is hogging most of the country's beauty? There is no shortage of amazing natural wonders to see in this state. It's ridiculous. Just look up pictures of Staircase Escalante, Devil's Garden, Sunset Arch, Zion Narrows, Coral Pink Sand Dunes and you'll see what I mean if you don't know what I'm talking about already.

Being out in such an expansive wilderness always does tend to illuminate the reality that life extends farther than our eyes can see and our minds can comprehend. There's a huge intricately woven complex world, planet, solar system, galaxy, history, genealogy and evolution that we are all members of. There is nothing new under the sun, just different ways of molding and innovating what grows there. The projects, tasks and innovations that are sometimes clung to so tightly will never fulfill anyone in the way that things unseen can, yet it's a challenge to try and capture those salient factors, but that is the above photographer's take on his own work. I think it's mine too, whether that be in writing, pictures or photos, in order to do what Robert Doisneau, that awesome French photographer, stated:

"The most beautiful and simplest reflex of all is the spontaneous desire to preserve a moment of joy destined to disappear. The act of quickly trying to capture the fleeting moment is more calculated - an image to prove one's own world exists."

Power Line Outline

Blue on Yellow

The Ten Minute Crossing

Hello Brigham Young

View from a Bicycle