Unremarkable | Ray Palmer Photography

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Unremarkable
(Petrified Dunes, Arches NP)
Past the surreal corridor of Park Avenue, past the Three Gossips, and beyond the Court House Towers, the landscape drops away to starboard into a lower area, full of domes and washes, on a gradual southward slope towards the Colorado. It was once a sea of sand dunes, buried under sediments of some geological era, cemented in place and left to the elements to erode. There are no trails here, no significant awe factor, so it is passed by on the way to the famous icons of Arches. I’ve wandered here often, following animal trails and open sand between rabbit brush, sage, and juniper, climbing the slopes of sandstone to see what the eye might behold, often to top oy with no way down but back. My images here are few, made difficult by higher ground in three directions, and a lack of striking subjects. The beauty lies in the whole. On this morning, under heavy skies, sunrise came late it seemed, a bit up in the sky before burning through the horizon, and turning the cloud cover into a weave, a loose knit of macrame with a glowing undercarriage. I love land like this, because its very indistinction makes you look harder to see its charm. They flock to Arches for the flash--balanced rocks, gravity defying arches, gigantic fins of rock heaved sideways by continental collisions. Perhaps all of those geological events are metaphors of the course of our lives at one time or another; the juggling, the connections, the upheavals. In time, I guess, we settle into a petrified state, longing for an awakening, another flash of brilliance, but for now, unremarkable.

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Filename: Unremarkable
Copyright: Ray Palmer
Image Size: 2048x1376 / 2.4MB
Contained in galleries: West

Unremarkable<br />
(Petrified Dunes, Arches NP)<br />
Past the surreal corridor of Park Avenue, past the Three Gossips, and beyond the Court House Towers, the landscape drops away to starboard into a lower area, full of domes and washes, on a gradual southward slope towards the Colorado. It was once a sea of sand dunes, buried under sediments of some geological era, cemented in place and left to the elements to erode. There are no trails here, no significant awe factor, so it is passed by on the way to the famous icons of Arches. I’ve wandered here often, following animal trails and open sand between rabbit brush, sage, and juniper, climbing the slopes of sandstone to see what the eye might behold, often to top oy with no way down but back. My images here are few, made difficult by higher ground in three directions, and a lack of striking subjects. The beauty lies in the whole. On this morning, under heavy skies, sunrise came late it seemed, a bit up in the sky before burning through the horizon, and turning the cloud cover into a weave, a loose knit of macrame with a glowing undercarriage. I love land like this, because its very indistinction makes you look harder to see its charm. They flock to Arches for the flash--balanced rocks, gravity defying arches, gigantic fins of rock heaved sideways by continental collisions. Perhaps all of those geological events are metaphors of the course of our lives at one time or another; the juggling, the connections, the upheavals. In time, I guess, we settle into a petrified state, longing for an awakening, another flash of brilliance, but for now, unremarkable.