First Light at Canyon de Chelly by Mark P Betts As they said on Top 40 Hit AM Radio: This is a Blast

First Light at Canyon de Chelly by Mark P Betts As they said on Top 40 Hit AM Radio: This is a Blast from the Past I enjoy going back through my old photographs because it brings back such vivid memories. I also get to try new processing flows on the raw photographs to see if I can get them to more closely resemble my memories. And I remember this morning so well. I was alone at Spider Rock overlook at Canyon de Chelly and watched the sun rise over The Chuska Mountains. It was that exciting time in fall that reminds you that winter is coming but summer is still large in your rear-view mirror. The mornings are chilly bordering on cold but the afternoons can make shade a welcome relief. This is an important religious site for the Dineh and they have a wonderful ritual for greeting the sun each morning. The morning chill and quiet stillness heightened my senses and yet also calmed me down from my pre-dawn drive from Chinle to the overlook. I was a little tense because of the knowledge that deer and livestock could be around any curve on the dark, twisting road that followed the canyon top. Water still in the canyon bottom had formed a light ground haze in the cold pre-dawn that clung to the canyon bottom. As the sun slowly rose and shapes first appeared, looming out of the darkness, my pulse slowed but my wonder increased. I knew I was present at something very special, the gift of a new day. As the sun continued its upward journey, colors slowly appeared on the dim grey and black forms in the canyon. Besides the ground fog in the canyon, a low stratus deck of clouds hung on the crests of the Chuska Mountains to the east, caught on the rocky ridges. Suddenly, everything changed. The sun rose above the mountains and pierced some of the cloud deck. Much of the light, however, still bounced off of the bottom of the clouds for a minute, flooding the canyon with a diffuse gold light. The beams that did pierce the deck, formed shafts of light through the rapidly soaring ground fog and spot-lighted the far side of the canyon. Spider Woman, who can be seen crawling out of the top of Spider rock, and I were entranced by this scene and I can finally show it to you just as I remember it. My wish for you and myself is that we remember this scene and go in beauty. MG_0582 https://flic.kr/p/2hPs4sT -- source link
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