Terrell Brothers Road Trip - Day 8: Magnificence and Endings
Photographing in Bryce Canyon is much like photographing in Arches. The beauty of the place is astounding, but it’s terribly hard to photograph well, and then of course there tends to be a lot of people doing people things that detract from the experience. But like Arches, one really should not pass up seeing the place because it is truly magnificent. Still, that does not always make for great imagery, even though the photos can be stunning at one level - face it, there’s a reason they made it into a national park. So I couldn’t let myself deny Len the wonder that is Bryce at sunrise, even though I expected my images to disappoint (they do). They should be more, but they are not. Perhaps I just do not know the place well enough to photograph it better (or I simply need to be a better photographer), but it deserves better than I have delivered. That said, what a place to be at as the sun peeps over the horizon!
We arrived in the parking lot well before sunrise, assuming the “Sunrise Point” area would be a decent place to photograph first thing in the morning. You can credit my incredible analytical skills for reaching that conclusion, and, of course, the fact that I had photographed along that stretch before and I think it’s the most interesting area of the park. Particularly at sunrise.
My first couple of images were made in, what appeared to the eye to be, total darkness. The exposures were long and . . . not very well composed. After about 15 minutes or so, we could start to see the sky begin to glow, particularly the red streak along the horizon hinting at the sun’s arrival. Fortunately, with a long exposure, the photograph doesn’t look nearly as dark as it did that morning.
Stunning, beautiful Bryce Canyon NP shares a photographic failing with the even more amazing (to me) Yosemite NP - neither location benefits from that lovely pre-morning glow that is evident in so many other locations (pretty much anywhere else in the desert, the Painted Hills, Bandon, the list goes on). I think it’s the valley/canyon nature of the locations (though Bryce visually appears to be wide open), or perhaps the clouds that morning, but the light there is/was different. Which is the long way of saying that we pretty much had to wait until the sun hit the horizon before the spectacular show started.
Not that there weren’t details to focus on before the sun rose . . .
. . . but once it did, everything appeared to be on fire.
And as with sunrise images everywhere, the quality of the light changed rapidly. Much more rapid than I’d expected, again perhaps because of the clouds first filtering the sun’s light, then eventually letting it shine through.
Once the sun crested the horizon, I knew I had a while to photograph the interesting formations in rapidly changing shadow conditions before things became really harsh. So I set about trying to enjoy myself.
As I write this, I’ve finished Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. And as much as I may have certain disagreements with some of his firmly held assertions (but certainly not about the one that would assert I am no more than a tourist in my iron coffin on wheels when in the desert), there is much he has right about both the desert and our being in it. So I’ll quote from him throughout this post, because I am really not much more than a quoter, whether in words or images, and that isn’t such a bad thing, is it?
“He looked like the steed of Don Quixote carved out of wood by Giacometti.”
For a person who wants to project himself as a man of the earth, Edward Abbey certainly is cultured. Nobody quotes Giacometti in a nature book without being well-educated and without having an affinity for the artist. I’d posted an “homage to Giacometti” photograph from Bryce Canyon from our 2015 trip in the blog because there was plainly a Giacometti man standing on top of one of the spires. Being here this time was no different, the formations constantly remind me of him in form and spatial relationships. What amazing forms!
I tried as I could to make images that reveal aspects of the park, its interesting features and, in particular, the way the light bounces around within the spire formations.
It’s very difficult to make an image that seems to be a balanced whole, whether you’re looking at the landscape in details . . .
It’s very difficult to make an image that seems to be a balanced whole, whether you’re looking at the landscape in details . . .
So we kept at it, moving along the canyon rim to get different views into the canyon and of different features.
And revisiting certain clusters that repeatedly caught my eye throughout the ever-changing light.
The nice thing about the rim between Sunset Point and Sunrise Point is that you’re able to be by yourself while photographing and, in particular, those moments when you pause to enjoy simply being there. The clusters of people are crowded at the “points” and few actually walk from one point to the next.
By that stage of the trip, I started having that feeling that the end is coming - something one tries to put off as long as one can lest one spoil the last few days of an otherwise wonderful trip. Some trips I’m more successful at doing that than others. That view into the canyon was enough to set me thinking about what a wonderful adventure we’d had and about the diversity of landscapes we’d seen, this being yet another.
“Alone in the silence, I understand for a moment the dread which many feel in the presence of primeval desert, the unconscious fear which compels them to tame, alter or destroy what they cannot understand, to reduce the wild and prehuman to human dimensions. Anything rather than confront directly the antihuman, the other world which frightens not through danger or hostility, but in something far worse - its implacable indifference.”
As expected, the sun continued its trek upward and we eventually called it a morning. It doesn’t pay to keep hammering at the same type of images, particularly as the light starts to flatten the landscape. The only way we were going to get anything different was to hike down into the canyon (not in the plans) or to move to other viewpoints.
We headed back to Ruby’s for breakfast. There, while in cell phone coverage, we’d got a couple of messages that gave us pause to think, and then to get back to business. We headed back into the park and drove as far into it as possible, discovering that just that morning they’d cleared the snow from a few more miles of the solitary park road and opened up a couple of more viewpoints for the season.
So we drove until we hit barriers on the road (yup, there was snow beyond them), pulled into the viewpoint parking lot just before the barrier, and started working our way backwards. I wanted to just enjoy the sights (having previously “photographed” them with my real cameras (to utter frustration with the images)) and decided either my cell phone or the Lumix images would have to do to tell the story.
They were more than adequate for the job. This was the first time I’ve been here during snow. It would be interesting to be here when there was fresh snow on the ground! Though I suspect it would be quite a bit colder than it was.
So we did viewpoint photography, working our way back towards the entrance, taking our time at each of the stops because one does not rush beauty.
And while the spire features in this part of the park are not as numerous as in the main basin, they are much closer at times, and from this part of the plateau you get a better feel for the greater landscape looking down towards the area around Kodachrome State Park.
And some of the features are simply spectacular. Even at these smaller pull-outs, if you can take the time to wait, there are moments when the crowds depart, before others come, and you can feel like you are there all by yourself. Those moments are special.
“* * * to admire the splendor of the landscape, the perfection of the silence.”
And then, for all intents and purposes, it was over.
We headed back to the park entrance, into cell phone coverage. There, life reminded us that more was going on in the world than our road trip and it was time for the trip to come to a close. After a short phone call and a bit of spontaneous trip planning, we headed out of Bryce Canyon, turning left instead of right as we’d originally planned, taking the quickest route back to Phoenix.
The drive, as one might expect, was beautiful of course. How could it not be? But it wasn’t what we’d planned. We had to cancel two half-days of photography from the trip itinerary. There was the off-road trip south from Kodachrome State Park on Cottonwood Canyon Road, where I was hoping to stop at a lovely rock outcropping Ann and I had to pass-up on a previous trip. There was the possible couple of hour hike (who am I kidding? 4 hours with photography) at the Toadstool Hoodoos, and then the Lake Powell off-road trip to allow for photo shoots (evening and morning) in a totally nondescript location that comes alive at the edges of the desert light. That would have been a very welcome send-off from the desert. And then there was the visit along the south rim of the Grand Canyon (a place Len hasn’t seen) that was to take place on the drive back down to Phoenix. I guess we’ll just have to have a road trip 2 for Len’s Grand Canyon experience.
As it turned out, my ad-hoc trip planning didn’t go as smoothly as planned. First, we discovered that a lovely German Bakery located between Bryce Canyon and Zion NP has closed and is now an outfitter’s offices. What a loss! Second, we arrived into Kanab a half-hour after a wonderful French Bakery had closed for the day. Yet another culinary loss! But intrepid travelers we are, I at least found a really good organic coffee shop-bookstore-outdoors store to get a latte for the road! It would not be a coffee-free drive. We had no more issues on the rest of the way back.
All trips come to an end. Some as you expect, but many not, so it wasn’t a surprise. As I said, the drive back was beautiful, much of it through landscape I’d not seen recently (and Len never). And in-between our conversations there were long pauses, giving us time to think about what we’d just experienced over the past few days. Of course, only to be interrupted with one or the other of us saying, “Hey, check that out over there!”
That’s what I like about being on the road. The driving and the time it gives you to examine, to think about, or even better, to simply absorb the landscape. Yes, even from our iron horse. It’s so much better than a flying tube. And so much better when it’s interspersed with real periods outside of the iron horse, the time spent on foot walking the landscape. For me (us), that meant also with tripod and camera in hand, trying our best to make an image that conveys how we’re feeling about what we see, after struggling to see more than what the immediate glance has to offer. How does one photograph the wind of the desert? The stillness and silence that isn’t actually “quiet” of the desert? The sounds and signs of life that is so rarely seen? The heat, the unrelenting light, the dryness of a landscape that is both barren and rich? For a non-stop roadtrip where we never gave these splendid locations the photography time they deserved, I don’t think we didn’t do too bad a job of experiencing it or photographing it.
Best of all, the trip reminded me of why I love being in the desert. I was reminded of when I would backpack in the woods of Oregon alone, the knowledge that it is just you and that thing we call “Mother Nature,” that really isn’t motherly at all.
“The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, this desert landscape is the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying or our going. Whether we live or die is a matter of absolutely no concern whatsoever to the desert.”
Still, although it cares nothing for us, nature nurtures the soul and did so during this trip. Given that, and the company I had, the Terrell Brother’s Road Trip has to be called a great success.