Devil's Kitchen - Colorado National Monument

Author's Comments

Most people drive Rim Rock Drive without ever stopping here, which is part of why I keep returning. The trail is short, just under a mile and a half round trip, but it descends into something that feels much larger than its footprint suggests. Devil's Kitchen is an enclosure rather than a view. You walk down into it, and the spires close around you, and the photograph you came to make becomes something different than the one you imagined. The light is the whole argument. In the first hour after sunrise, the sun comes in low and clean over the eastern rim and finds its way down into the amphitheater in pieces. Some walls catch fire while others stay in deep shadow, and the contrast is severe in a way that flat midday light cannot give you. I work wide first to establish the enclosure, then move closer to a single spire and let it fill the frame. The upward perspective is genuinely dramatic here. A figure at the base of one of these formations gives you scale you cannot fake. Come in late October or early November when the air is cold and dry and the red of the sandstone goes almost saturated against the blue. Come on a Tuesday. The trailhead near the east entrance is rarely busy on weekday mornings, and once you have descended into the rocks, you will likely have the whole amphitheater to yourself for an hour or more. That is the gift this place offers. Not a grand vista, but a small enclosed world that asks you to slow down and look up.

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