Walnut Canyon National Monument

Author's Comments

The first time I walked the Island Trail I did not photograph anything for the first twenty minutes. I was too busy trying to understand what I was seeing. The dwellings are tucked into the limestone in a way that makes them almost disappear, and then your eye adjusts and they are everywhere. Rooms within rooms. Walls built nearly a thousand years ago into alcoves that the canyon had already carved for them. The Sinagua chose this place for reasons that become obvious as you stand inside one of the rooms and look out at the same view they had. Morning is the only real answer here. The trail loops around an island of stone in the middle of the canyon, and the dwellings face mostly north and east, which means the early light reaches into the alcoves before the sun climbs high enough to flatten everything. By ten the contrast has gone hard and the rooms have fallen into shadow that does not photograph well. Before nine, the light is doing something else entirely - warm, low, raking across the masonry in a way that brings out every hand-laid stone. The wide shots from the rim are the obvious photographs and they are worth making, especially in fall when the ponderosas hold their color against the pale limestone. But the trail rewards the closer work. A doorway. A soot-blackened ceiling. The way a thousand-year-old wall meets the natural curve of the rock above it. Bring a lens that can handle low light in the alcoves and resist the urge to rush the descent. The 240 steps back up are easier if you have already taken your time going down.

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