Lake Powell

I think I know why the desert seems alive; because it is. Because here you can see the earth itself, the shifting, deep-time rock, and you can see quite clearly that it’s as alive as any plant or animal. And you can see the place where the rain forms, the gray sea-like air as it churns on itself, around, around, dark enough to obscure a mountain. The water does not belong here. This would be canyons. It would be deep, smooth walls of red dirt.  Yet it is beautiful. Once a sea, water again. It joins the cliff-sides seamlessly. They reflect onto each other, the pinks and reds and pale-greens molded into one flat pool, like a painting, like spilled light, these colors that have not mixed in millions of years.