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.
As a cloudless morning dawns in Zion Canyon, the Virgin River finds more obstacles and cascades to jump through, some natural, some bearing the mark of humankind. Photographed March 2022.
