As my son Tadeh and I walked into the Narrows and took our first steps in the Virgin River, I could not help but remember a much colder day in October, eight years ago, when I first experienced this hike. I promised then that I would bring Tadeh here one day, to see the glow of the walls hemming us in, to feel the might of the river against each footstep as we plodded upstream, and the thrill of sinking in, often to the waist, in the calmer sections. A microcosm of rounded rocks cleaving the flow greeted us in every corner, every turn of the river, and no two steps were ever the same, nor will they ever be again. Photographed March 2022.
For a moment, the unbridled rush of humanity through the canyon threatened to fill the morning not with sounds of chirping birds and an awakening landscape, but with the screech of tires on the four-mile stretch of asphalt between us and the Narrows. Heading in the opposite direction, we found our calm at the Court of the Patriarchs, in time for the first kiss of dawn upon Abraham, Isaac, and much later, Jacob. The liquid gold descending upon these peaks found its reflection below, in the Virgin river, becalmed by the myriad bends it had to endure as it reminded the monoliths that it, alone, had carved them out of the Navajo sandstone, had given them their shape and their fame... Photographed March 2022.
The snow won't be long now, and the red clay will soon harden, freezing footprints till the next rain comes. The hoodoos marching into the valley say goodbye to the Sun. Photographed March 2022.
