Miracle Rock - Colorado National Monument

Author's Comments

There is something almost absurd about Miracle Rock the first time you see it. A boulder that size has no business sitting on a pedestal that thin, and yet there it is, balanced through some patient negotiation between gravity and sandstone that has been going on longer than any of us can usefully imagine. I have photographed it in three seasons now and I still have not made the image I am after. The trouble is scale. Without something familiar in the frame, the rock reads as smaller than it is. A figure helps. So does a wide lens worked from low and close, with the pedestal cutting hard against the sky. Morning is the hour. The east face catches first light and the sandstone goes from grey to something closer to rust, and the shadow underneath the boulder deepens into a dark band that finally gives the formation the weight it deserves. The trail itself is generous. Six miles one way is more than most people want, but you do not need the full distance to reach the rock, and the walk past the Kissing Couple and the other monoliths is part of the photograph in a way that is hard to articulate until you have done it. The monoliths set the vocabulary. By the time you arrive at Miracle Rock you have already learned how to look. Come in November or late March. Avoid summer entirely. The desert here does not reward heat, and the light in shoulder season is cleaner, longer, more willing to show you what the stone actually looks like.

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