Portfolio: Images and Impressions

Images and Impressions Portfolio by Gary Ladd

The landscape of the Colorado Plateau is secretive. The intense emptiness of the desert stretches to sharp-edged horizons, and plateaus rise in grand stratigraphic steps. But concealed among the mesas is a maze of intriguing hidden canyons.

The most inconspicuous features of the plateau, yet perhaps its greatest treasures, these canyons-slots, cracks, joints, chutes, and rockbound corridors are tranquil havens. Tiny streams meander from cliff to cliff, and quiet pools mirror sky and rock. Amphitheaters echo the voices of the water. Here, slender fingers of desert varnish reach down sheer walls from the parched world above to touch the soothing waters of the inner realms.

Some canyons are so deep and narrow, their walls so convoluted, that they are skyless. Sunlight never penetrates, and the bottom stays

(BELOW) Dried mud forms a pattern like crazed ceramic in a basin deep inside Six Mile Wash. This picture and the one at right were taken at Grand Canyon National Park.

(OPPOSITE PAGE) Rainwater pools on a limestone ledge in Cork Spring Canyon.

(FOLLOWING PANEL) A shallow stream flowing between narrow sandstone walls waters redbud trees in Oak Canyon, a tributary of Lake Powell near Navajo Mountain. in deep twilight even at noon in midsummer.

The canyons resonate with pattern. Cracks and curls are born and grow old in a mudbottomed pothole. An undulating sculptured wall suggests the fluid form of rushing water. Maidenhair ferns and scarlet monkey flowers follow seep lines, and boulders with green and orange skins of lichen doze in ranks. Canyon time pulses to the rhythms of flood and drought, windstorm and hush, withering heat and stark cold. To those who explore them, the shadowy canyons, the darkened corridors, and twisting passages offer seclusion, refreshment, and delight.