One of the most beautiful transition zones I have ever come across in my wanderings is found in Southeastern Utah where the slickrock eastern edge of Cedar Mesa transitions to the wide, flat cottonwood-covered expanse of Comb Wash, before running head on into the nearly vertical and scree slope-dressed wall of Comb Ridge. The scree wall is mostly of the Chinle Formation, while above it there is Wingate Sandstone, covered by Keyenta Sandstone, and capped by the ubiquitous Navajo Sandstone, a mere 185 million years young. What appears as a diagonal trace across the face of the right wall of the ridge is the rock-blasted road cut of County Road 229, the original dirt route through Comb Ridge eastward toward Monticello and Blanding. At the top of the ridge, 229 intersects the Posey Trail Road another historical route running through the rocks.
A focal length of 292mm (195mm x 1.5 crop sensor) gave me the magnification and angle-of-view I wanted. An aperture of f/20 provided depth-of-field from the camera-to-subject distance; and a shutter speed of 1/10 second in late afternoon light at ISO 100 gave me a very slightly darker-than-medium exposure.
The eighty-mile-long fold in the earth that Comb Ridge gives us is a geological and cultural treasure. It was into this area that many of the expatriates of Chaco ultimately migrated in the years following the decline of the Chacoan period of Ancestral Puebloan history.