mesa arch

An Unrivalled Vista

It was a beautiful sunrise - a speck of light peering through the distant mesas and buttes, lighting up the red underside rocks of the sandstone Mesa arch, hanging over a lip of one such steep mesa, with nothing but air between the arch and the floor a 1000ft below. And to capture this premier attraction, more than a dozen photographers had crowded around, jostling for the strategic position that get the perfect angle of light and shadow.

This image, however, is not your typical image from the Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park. I waited a while until the crowd cleared, and peered through the arch at the landscape that opened up in the light - an endless range of buttes and mesas rising up from the myriad formations on the floor 1500ft below. The play of shadow and light gave rise to strange silhouettes and bizarre vistas, a sight that was a delight to photograph. This is one such take on a unique vista in Canyonlands National Park

Canyonlands National Park
UT USA

The light of Dawn

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.

Theodore Roosevelt

One of the proudest legacy of the 26th President is the crown jewel of the American conservation era - the National Park system. And while I have been fortunate enough to visit 34 of these memorable places, very few have stuck to my mind and my heart, and one of them is the Canyonlands National Park. And nothing captures the essence of this rugged desert terrain like the view from Mesa Arch at sunrise, an arch suspended over a vertiginous cliff overlooking a vast canyonland.

One of the rituals as a photographer is to make the dawn trip to Mesa Arch, squeeze your tripod in between the two dozen others, and eek out a few shots just as the sun crests the horizon, and one more just as it disappears behind the arch. While it is photogenic place, it was the view that the location presented that I found the most endearing: cliff walls glowing yellow in the morning sun, stupas, stacks, and hoodoos silhouetting in the slanted light, twisted canyon disappearing into the vast expanse of the horizon. The sense of belonging and being humbled by nature is perhaps the primary reason why such regions must be preserved for posterity.

Canyonlands National Park
UT USA