Skies Over Slick Rock

"The Purple Sky Over Monument Valley" JACK SLEETH Skies Over Slick Rock

On dark nights when the wind screams over barren rock and down stark canyons one can almost hear the echoes of the angry seas that raged over the land in remote ages past. This is the high plateau country of northeastern Arizona, land of swirling sand dunes, land of slick rock, land of sun and wind, land of storm and dramatic skies, land of lonely miles and empty distances, a harsh land but a land of bold and pulsating colors, terrifying in a way but above all a land of vivid beauty. It seems as if the story of all eternity can be read here. A fossil deposit tells of oceans that once flooded the land when earth was a'making; dinosaur tracks recount days of lush mire when those ponderous monsters were the lords of all creation; a forest of petrified logs is mute evidence of swirling floods turning the land topsy-turvy; towering cliffs, sculptured magnificence against blue skies, bear witness to the fury of cataclysmic forces that tossed mountains skyward and gave the land the outward appearance it has today; canyons, cruelly carved in sandstone, form a scroll upon which is written the timelessness and patience of the elements at work on earth's crusty surface with their sharp and remorseless tools. Buttes and mesas, leaning against the horizon, are a brooding diary of a million years of the restless wind.

Compared to the aeons of earth's story told here, man's history is that of a few "happy-luckygo" moments measured in a handful of lazy centuries. There were the Anasazis, "the ancient ones," their mud dwellings in crevices of high cliffs, dusty and sunbaked evidence of their lives and times. Then came the Navajos and then the traders and then the tourists. The land changes, the people change, but only the skies over slick rock never change. The skies reflect the temper of the harsh, radiant land, the seething turmoil of the restless weather, the violence of an unbridled sun and other elements in Nature's repertoire. In all, the picture of skies over slick rock is a very pleasing one. The skies give character to and add color to the land. As the setting of gold and platinum, lovingly created by the master jeweler, embellishes the precious gem, so the skies set off the wilderness of slick rock below, emphasizing its grandeur, dramatizing its moods, deepening its fathomless mystery, adding sparkle and brilliance to its highlights.

There are many, many days, of course, when the skies are clear and devoid of even a vestige of cloud. These skies are the despair of the photographer. The overhead blue fades into a white blah! at the horizon and no one ever found white blah! tantalizingly photographic however colorful the land holding them up. When the storms blow in from over the surrounding mountains, then you have the skies to please the poet's fancy but which are the everlasting despair of the painter. These skies grab the sun's rays and with that alchemy peculiar to Heaven turn themselves into extravaganzas of color, bold and raucous color, iridescent and evanescent, as varied as the tempestuous earth below, as changeable as the minutes of the day, the days of the months, the months of the season, the seasons of the year. The stormy times of the year are generally in late summer and winter, but each season has its characteristic skies. Summer brings the great, white thunderheads, rain-laden, and how they set off the terrain! When these cloud-bedecked skies do mad extravagant tricks with the sun's rays at close of day, the result is something to behold and to remember. The skies of winter, hurled furiously over the mountains from the north and west, are dark and ominous but they, too, have a charm all their own. They are never the same, these skies over slick rock. The expectant beholder can depend on one thing, though: When the sun is right, when the season is right, when the clouds are right, skies over slick rock are as spectacular as any you'll ever find anywhere, any time.