Hopi Point

Author's Comments

Hopi Point reaches further into the canyon than seems reasonable, and that is the whole reason to come. From the end of the point you can see the Colorado in two directions, a thin ribbon of green-gold catching the last light at the bottom of a void that is hard to hold in your head all at once. Isis Temple and Shiva Temple stand to the north like cathedrals carved by something patient. As the sun drops, the shadow line climbs the far walls and the colors do what canyon colors do at this hour - the reds deepening, the rim going purple, the depths losing their detail and becoming pure shape. The crowd is real. By forty-five minutes before sunset the rail is shoulder to shoulder, and there is a particular kind of ambient noise that comes with two hundred people watching the same thing. I have learned to make my peace with it. The light is too good to refuse on principle, and there is something honest about all those people standing quietly together as the canyon goes dark. What I would say is this. Stay past sunset. Most of the crowd leaves the moment the sun drops below the horizon, and the fifteen minutes after departure are often better than the fifteen before. The sky goes pink behind the temples, the canyon below cools to blue, and the contrast becomes something a camera can actually hold. Winter light here is colder and clearer than summer light, with less haze in the deep middle distance, and the shuttle is not running so you drive yourself out and have the road mostly to yourself on the way back.

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