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(Escalante Desert, Utah)
The problem with long days not quite properly planned is getting camp settled before dark, which tonight coincided with sundown. Eating in the dark is fine, but tent sites are better surveyed with daylight left. Accomplished, but food still on hold, I wander a ways out into the desert to enjoy the early evening. At this moment, nothing is willing to let go. In the distance the Straight Cliffs still get the prismatic bend of sunset, as do the scattered forms above, begging me to be quick before they turn to gray. The pinions closer in are gathering dusk while sand, rock and prairie grass still bake off accumulated energy. I think the last of the light must be carried on a wind that almost always rises with sunset, as if it’s all too much for a disappearing sun to take with its final wink. There are all kinds of canyons, slots, arches, slick rock domes and bowls, and artwork in the Escalante, but most of it is like this. A vastness that I never tire of letting my eyes follow, walking visually between sage and juniper, down through draws imagining how they curve around to the next bench, stopping to linger at random hoodoos with a thought to discover what else is hiding there. It’s a landscape that tilts crazily, sedimentary epochs uplifted buckled and seemingly sunk on end sometime back when continents crashed. Twice a day we participate in a balance between the light and the darkness, an evening of the day’s luminary extremes. I can close my eyes and pour the day’s decisions and exertions onto an imaginary scale against the weight of thoughts the night will hold. I most often realize I wasn’t paying attention, and the moment takes me by surprise, a leveling bubble tipping towards time. And I play the game of evening it out...a fool’s errand.

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Filename
In The Evening
Copyright
Ray Palmer
Image Size
2048x1367 / 1.8MB
Contained in galleries
West
(Escalante Desert, Utah)<br /> The problem with long days not quite properly planned is getting camp settled before dark, which tonight coincided with sundown. Eating in the dark is fine, but tent sites are better surveyed with daylight left. Accomplished, but food still on hold, I wander a ways out into the desert to enjoy the early evening. At this moment, nothing is willing to let go. In the distance the Straight Cliffs still get the prismatic bend of sunset, as do the scattered forms above, begging me to be quick before they turn to gray. The pinions closer in are gathering dusk while sand, rock and prairie grass still bake off accumulated energy. I think the last of the light must be carried on a wind that almost always rises with sunset, as if it’s all too much for a disappearing sun to take with its final wink. There are all kinds of canyons, slots, arches, slick rock domes and bowls, and artwork in the Escalante, but most of it is like this. A vastness that I never tire of letting my eyes follow, walking visually between sage and juniper, down through draws imagining how they curve around to the next bench, stopping to linger at random hoodoos with a thought to discover what else is hiding there. It’s a landscape that tilts crazily, sedimentary epochs uplifted buckled and seemingly sunk on end sometime back when continents crashed. Twice a day we participate in a balance between the light and the darkness, an evening of the day’s luminary extremes. I can close my eyes and pour the day’s decisions and exertions onto an imaginary scale against the weight of thoughts the night will hold. I most often realize I wasn’t paying attention, and the moment takes me by surprise, a leveling bubble tipping towards time. And I play the game of evening it out...a fool’s errand.
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