In the first days of October, Lane (pictured) and I took a trip to southwestern Colorado to visit our friend Jodi, who lives in Paonia.
We drove down to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, where I photographed Jodi and Lane at the north rim.
Here at Chasm View, the canyon is over a third of a mile (1,820 feet) deep.
An enormous detail from what is called, aptly enough, Painted Wall.
The colorful rock of the canyon includes albite (milky white), almandine (reddish violet),
Amazonite (bright green), hornblende (black or dark green), mica (black to silvery
white), pyrope (yellowish red), and spessartine (brown with red or pink tones).
A view from The Narrows.
The canyon itself is 48 miles long.
“Look, Ma. No guardrails!”
We hiked up to the abandoned (in 1941) Yule marble quarry, spilling like a glacier
from the mountainside and melting into a stream, where my lens cap now rests in peace.
As I climbed the blocks (whose predecessors were used for the Lincoln Memorial
and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) with my camera in hand, I happened to
notice in passing that some of them were painted DANGER: KEEP OFF.
Cutting scores.
Cable anchoring holes.
Circular saw marks.
Some come to take pictures of the aspen trees changing.
Others, of the evergreen trees dying from varying degrees of pine beetle infestation.
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