Navajo Bridge

Author's Comments

The first time I walked out onto the old bridge I had to stop halfway and recalibrate. Four hundred and seventy feet is an abstract number until you are standing on the deck looking straight down at the Colorado, which from that height is not the muscular green river I knew from Lees Ferry but a thin, jade ribbon threading the bottom of a cut in the earth. The scale rearranges you. The photograph most people make here is the obvious one. The arch of the new bridge from the deck of the old, framed against red rock and sky. It is a fine image and worth making once. But I find the bridge more interesting in its details. The rivets on the 1929 span. The way morning light comes down the canyon walls in stages, hitting the rim first and working its way down over the better part of an hour. The shadow line crawling across the river itself, which is the moment I wait for. And then there are the condors. They roost on the understructure and they are enormous in a way photographs do not quite communicate. A nine and a half foot wingspan reads differently when one drops past you at eye level and banks into the canyon. Bring a longer lens than feels reasonable. They are skittish about people but indifferent to the bridge, which means if you are patient and quiet you will get closer than you expect. Morning is the time. The light is working, the air is still, and the parking lot has not yet filled with the tour buses that arrive midday on their way to the North Rim. Come early. Walk slowly. Look down once and then look at everything else.

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