Boynton Canyon

Author's Comments

I came into Boynton on a cold morning in late November, and the canyon had not yet warmed. The walls were still in shadow and the air smelled of juniper and something colder underneath, the particular dryness that high desert holds before the sun reaches the floor. I walked slowly. There was no reason to hurry. The thing about a box canyon is that the geometry does the work for you. The walls rise on three sides and the light has to negotiate its way in, which means morning is not just preferable here, it is the entire argument. The eastern wall lights first and throws warm reflected light onto the western face, and for maybe forty minutes the canyon is lit from two directions at once. That is when the red is reddest. That is when the ponderosa at the upper end of the trail catches a kind of side light that separates each tree from the rock behind it. I am not the right person to speak to the vortex. I know what the Yavapai-Apache have said about this place and I know what I have felt walking it, and those are not the same conversation. What I can say is that the canyon asks for a slower pace than most Sedona trails, and that the spur to the kachina spires near the trailhead is worth the small detour for the close work, the texture of the sandstone, the way the rock weathers in vertical seams. Bring a wide lens for the canyon mouth. Bring something longer for the spires. And give yourself the full morning. This is not a place to photograph quickly.

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