Earthworks

They hide in low places, camouflaged by their modest scale, invisible to the unobservant and unnoticed by the hasty. Yet worlds lie within the abstract configurations of line, shape, and contour. But watch your step. The abstractions of water and wind are fragile. Frost vaporizes with the rising sun, mud cracks age in hours, reflections dissolve in a whisper of wind. Wafers of etched sandstone can shatter underfoot, and a fumbled lens cap will demolish an exquisite pattern of ripples. Upside down, the ground-glass image of a 4x5 field camera can elevate sand and dirt to distinction. The photographer may jerk the focusing cloth from his head to look again at the scene before the lens, astonished at the power of pattern and abstraction. Now, just don't drop the cable release.

Erosion reveals repeating patterns of deposition (PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 22 AND 23) in a sandstone wilderness. (LEFT) After a flash flood in Kanab Canyon, a pool of mud dries in smoothly rounded motifs.

Symmetrical ripples edge Cathedral Wash on the Colorado River.

In the morning sun near Glen Canyon, delicate designs formed by frost quickly evaporate.

Curls of dried mud adorn the bed of a tributary of Kaibito Wash.