Dolores River Canyon near Dolores

Author's Comments

The Dolores does not announce itself. You drive south from the dam on 145 and the canyon opens slowly, walls rising in that particular Colorado red that goes warmer as the afternoon settles, and the river runs clear and unhurried below. This is not a canyon of grand scale. It is a canyon of intimate proportion, and that is its argument. Mid-October is when I make the drive. The cottonwoods along the banks turn a yellow that is almost aggressive against the sandstone, and on a still morning the river holds both colors at once. The pullouts between town and the dam are unmarked and easy to miss. Stop at the ones that look like nothing. Walk down to the water. The compositions are close in - a single cottonwood leaning over a bend, the trunk of a juniper against red rock, the way the current breaks around a stone and reassembles itself downstream. Golden hour does specific work here. The walls catch light from the west and throw it back across the river, and for maybe twenty minutes the whole corridor goes amber. I have stood in that light and forgotten to make a photograph, which is its own kind of recommendation. This is canyon country at a quieter register. Not the cathedral version. The version where you can hear the water and the wind in the cottonwood leaves and almost nothing else.

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