Geoleometry

I have a love-hate relationship with Arches, NP.  In 2007, I made the photo on the right.  It was hotter that Georgia asphalt all over the plateau and we were chasing shade on the way out of camp.  Not sure what spurred us into the park, but when I was standing under this formation, in it's shade, a connection was made and a story started to emerge.  The most difficult aspect of photographing in this park are the tourists.  There are throngs of people and you'll just have to deal with them if you want a particular photo.  In 2007, I got lucky, the story was above us so all I had to do was point skyward and wait.  Big blue air, massive red stone, a sun that will eat you.  But the crucial element of this story and the area is a sense of wonder.  For me that wonder is connected with whimsy and the two are like seven year old boys.  One of my favourite photographs.
Five years later, almost to the day.  I have been making this spring trip to the greater Moab area for more than a decade.  Not for photography or art making purposes, those have their own schedule which I cannot dictate, but at the end of winter, I am hunting the sun and the stone, the wonder and whimsy.  Something struck me about the photograph I made in 2007, and on this trip I had the urge to try a reshoot.  So, no shit, there I was, again... this time, however, I was shivering in the shade.  The same tourists moving stiffly around me, making the same gestures they made five years ago.  Many of them pointing their own cameras skyward, clicking in mimicry and moving on.  It's not a judgment, please don't think that of me, the fact that I will sit for as long as it takes to get a photo provides me with a lot of time to watch and think.  I can't sit and watch ten people do the same thing without wondering about the behavioural instinct.  They'd stop, look at me, look up, snap a picture, look at the LCD, and shoot me a quizzical look, then go back toward the parking lot.  And I continued to sit and shiver and wait for the kids in the window to leave and maybe that large cloud would break up a little more.  After forty minutes, this happened:

Just enough similarity in the clouds to mimic the gestures of the stone, enough sun to reflect from the ground into the shadowed arch and give colour play with the sky.  A whimsical expression of the wonder that has connected me, and hopefully, you to the natural world.
This year's trip met with much colder temps and interesting weather patterns, that have been the persistent trend for the last few years.  Seems like the seasons are offsetting by a month.  This and the upswing in popularity may cause us to consider offsetting our annual trip, as well.
Fourteen years is a long time to get to know a place.  Watching the effects of time and ignorance destroy once pristine tracts of land has given me some understanding of the rationale behind regulations places like Arches have enacted.  But regulations are only as defined as the boundaries of the park and have created a casual "protect this, destroy that" attitude outside the boundary.  In the real wonderland, where the raw desert sits open and welcoming to the eco-tourists & photographers, the well-outfitted yet ill-prepared travelers who have begun creeping into the landscape like storm clouds.  Stoically sweeping skyward my greatest teacher remains silent in the face of my questions.  "How should we act?  Are you sheltering us, or saving yourself?  Am I hear to learn or to play?"


-Have a pleasant weekend.