Spruce Tree House

Author's Comments

The first time I stood at the overlook above Spruce Tree Canyon, I understood why the people who built this place chose it. The alcove holds the dwelling the way a hand might hold a bird, and morning light enters at a particular angle that warms the sandstone from the inside out. By midday the light flattens and the depth disappears. By afternoon the alcove falls into shadow and the rooms read as a single dark mass. Morning is the only hour that gives you the architecture. I have stopped trying to make the trail-level photograph. Rock fall has closed the path more often than not in recent years, and the overlook turns out to be the better vantage anyway. From above, you see the dwelling in its full geometry - the kivas as circles cut into the floor of the alcove, the room blocks stepping back into the curve of the stone, the whole settlement reading as something composed rather than discovered. A longer lens does most of the work here. The wide shot is honest but the details are where this place lives - a doorway no taller than a child, the soot-darkened ceiling where a thousand fires burned, the masonry that has held since the thirteenth century without mortar in some places and with very little in others. Winter light is cleaner than summer light. Snow on the canyon rim and dry stone in the alcove is a photograph I have made once and would drive eight hours to make again. Check with the museum before you commit to the morning. The trail status changes. The overlook does not.

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