Seen from around the edge of Freya Castle, the Unkar Creek watershed shines in the late afternoon light. A thousand years ago a Pueblo People spent their winters along the delta of Unkar Creek’s confluence with the great Colorado and their summers along the North Rim in Walhalla Glades where they were only steps away from this view of the beauty of the Great Ditch.
The Walhalla Plateau is rather unique in that it is somewhat lower than most of the North Rim, and because of this the winter snows melt sooner here, allowing for farming to be more productive. A focal length of 85mm, short-telephotoland, which allowed for slight magnification and compression, gave me the angle-of-view I wanted. An aperture of f/20 provided depth-of-field, and a shutter speed of 1/13th second at ISO 200 gave me a slightly darker-than-medium exposure.
There are those interests that always will be very willing to sell our common wealth and the struggle to restrain that privatization is a never-ending one in which we should all be eager to participate.
I love the Donohue quote.
Hi Lynne. Thank you so very much for being with us for this conversation. John O’Donohue would have been someone with whom I would have wished to sit down for many long conversations on a long range of subjects. He, unfortunately, left us much too soon. Stay safe and be well.
Lovely perspective.
Wow another awesome picture
Hey, Mike. Thank you much for being with us and for your very kind words. The North Rim is one of those places that simply lends itself to the expression of Beauty almost no matter where you look. I hope you are having a wonderfully productive winter and are staying safe as well. I am so very hopeful that in this new year we will experience the relief of widespread vaccination and the opportunities of travel once again. Take good care.
Hi John. Thank you for being with us and for those kind words. One of the joys of photographing from the rim is the amazing perspective that offers itself in almost every direction. Perhaps it’s the 1000+’ elevation differential offered by the North Rim that makes the perspective it offers so amazing and special, certainly not to belittle the South Rim.
Nice!
Hello My Friend. It’s always a pleasure to have you with us. Your words are received with honor and appreciation. I hope it is well with you. Be safe and enjoy the Beauty of a Western Massachusetts winter.
Don, wonderful pairing of your image and the story behind the place. I can’t help but feeling the various landforms wiggle from the lower left up and around the middle of the frame and out, beautifully framing the stone projection and focal point bathed in warm light. Beautiful colors and composition.
Hey Ray. I always enjoy hearing from you no matter how you choose to approach the subject. The Grand Canyon is, for me, a story that never ends. It is a visual reminder that time is the grand continuum and we are but tiny, even infinitesimal, blips within its fabric. Aren’t there just these amazing barely visible lines of rock that seem almost too small to notice but in reality may be a hundred feet high. The scale of the canyon is what has always awed me and rendered me silent in its presence. The light seems to bounce from wall to wall like pinballs in a great machine. Thanks for your kind words and thoughtful comments. Hope you’ve had an excellent week. Stay safe.
So much perspective — along with John O Donohue. Beautiful
Hi Robin. It’s great to hear from you! I hope you and the Boss are well and safe. It is my fond hope that whenever the pandemic seems to settle a bit in WNC we will be able to share a COVID Center visit. I mentioned somewhere above that the North Rim lends itself to perspective, and its magnificence automatically evokes the wonderful words that O’Donohue always strung together to share with us. Stay safe, be well, Walk in Beauty.
I can’t imagine having that ditch in my backyard when I was growing up. My backyard was very flat; it was mostly swampland and gators. Opposite ends!
This image shows so much depth and so many stories. It looks like the Pueblo people could probably tell the time and predict the weather just by glancing across the landscape. That big ditch was probably their school, church, livelihood, and entertainment.
Thanks for another reminder of the beauty all around us and how much we need to keep it for future generations to ponder.
Hey Nancy T. I’ve been thinking about you lately and hoping that you continue to be safe and well. If we had a ditch like this one for a backyard, we would have been explorers without peer, and you are exactly right, such a place can only serve multiple purposes in the lives of anyone near it. You have pretty well summed up its meaning as I would have imagined it. Thanks for your truly understanding the role we all have as stewards of this place we call “home.” Stay safe.
Great photo with great composition.
Hey Mike. Thanks very much for joining us and for your very kind comment. Our old Southern Appalachians seem stooped and gentle in the face of the sharp edges of the Colorado Plateau, but such is the nature of the earth’s great cycles: what is new will become old and what is old will eventually be new again. I have been enjoying your golden hour images from the Hiawassee River Valley: light that dances.Walk in Beauty and be safe.
Thanks, Everyone, for joining me for this conversation. There is something about the Southern Appalachians and the Colorado Plateau that seem so strikingly similar and simultaneously so radically different. Perhaps is is the presence of water and the outcomes produced by its presence or lack thereof. There are places in my mountains where I marvel at how much they look like locations on the Plateau and conversely places on the Plateau which speak of the Appalachians save for the absence of precipitation. And perhaps, because we can see the same forces at work in both places we can understand that everywhere we look Nature is a circle and we are tiny cogs on a wheel that is forever turning.