Window Rock

The first rule of landscape work is that weather makes everything interesting. Now and then the sky empties out altogether, no cloud, no color, nothing offered, and the land is left to carry the whole picture on its own. That day in Arches the sky gave me nothing at all, and so I stopped asking it. What was left was shadow: hard lines laid across rock by a sun with no obstacle in it. It turns out the land can carry a picture alone. I did not much enjoy being taught that by an empty sky.