Four Corners Monument

Author's Comments

The marker itself is the photograph everyone makes, and I have made it too. The hand on each of four states, the obligatory grin, the bronze disc gone warm under a fingertip. Make that picture. Then turn around. What I came back for is the country surrounding the platform. The Four Corners sits in a stretch of high desert that does not perform for the camera the way the famous parks do, and that is exactly its argument. The mesas in the distance are low and blue and patient. The earth at your feet is the particular red that only the Colorado Plateau makes, and at golden hour it goes almost lit-from-within. The vendor stalls ring the monument in a loose square, and the late afternoon light rakes between them in a way that is worth slowing down for. I prefer the last hour before sunset. The crowds thin, the bronze cools, and the wide horizon does what wide horizons do when the sun is low - it stretches. A long lens pulled toward the mesas will compress the distance into something painterly. A wide lens at the platform will give you sky, and there is a great deal of sky here. Pay the fee. Buy something from one of the vendors if you can. This is Navajo land, and the photograph you take home should carry some sense of that.

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