~:: Back to Santa Fe: pt. 1 ::~

The next day, they drove away with Sully.  Off across the desert hauling a trailer behind a mini-van.

The very next morning, we followed, setting out before the sun had quite broached the mountain shoulders.

I am NOT going to make you suffer through all 570 shots I took of this trip.  Only about 80% of them.

Because I want to give you the feeling of the height, and the downslopes and the changing face of the rock.

The SIZE of this part of the world.

Fantastic spaces and sweeps of land.  Titanic stands of pines made to look small against the size of the landscape.

Very, very long straight runs.  This is where you are most likely to doze off.

And now, the trees are gone.  Who knows how tall this hill once was?  It has wasted away, bit by bit, pebble by pebble – no deep root systems to hold it here.  Only the slabs of rock still remain.

The color.  Green for copper.  Red for iron.  White for sandstone, maybe?

Through the trip-worn windshield.  Here we don’t have mesas – we have these spiky formations – and I’m sure Chaz knows what to call them.  So interesting to see the layers of rock as they were laid down eons ago.

Rock getting redder all the time –

Until we hit Moab, where the rock is red as fire, and impish and eccentric besides.  The land of geological Brian Regans and Robin Williamses and Tim Burtons.

You look up and think you are seeing actual worn statuary – hundreds of feet high.  But it’s just rock, and the shapes?  At first glance something real.  At second – only rocks.

This is Arches National Park.  We’ve lived within a morning’s drive of it for over thirty years and never gone into the place.  This was our year to discover our own backyard.  These formations look like teeth to me.  Naked, sad teeth.  I wonder if Kris, driving through here, would suddenly be overcome with the need to put braces on these things?

The original horizontality of this formation was warped by tremendous subterranean forces.  I wonder if this happened slowly?  Or if one morning, there was just this wild, weird earthquake, and when the seventeen seconds had passed, suddenly, there’s this wrinkle in the rock.

The guy on the right reminds me of Easter Island.  The other thing is a poisonous mushroom.  A really, really big one.

And this looks like a distorted sphinx.  There are a lot of those in this place.

All these layers of stone?  They look like frozen lava flows.  But they aren’t.  All these lines were created by the wear of water on the stone.

The scope of this scape is breathtaking.

And for the finish – a self portrait.

Okay – here’s the deal.  I have so many more shots of this place.  If you’re not bored yet, I’ll show you some more tomorrow.  Whatcha say?