Mary Panttaja

No. Really.

The image that gleams so brightly at the top of the page is from an early morning in the red rock desert. Jim and I rose early to watch the sun rise from the edge of Dead Horse Point State Park in Southern Utah. We felt so blessed to sit in the dark and watch the morning spill over the cliffs and chasms. The surprise is that no red in the image is from the rock—it’s all sunlight. In the daylight the colors invert and it is still red in all directions.

The park is perched on a plateau called the Island in the Sky—a breathtaking place of hard stone and deep canyons, crystal air and stark light. There is a dirt road that circumnavigates the “island”, The White Rim Road, on a hard sandstone edge. You can drive it if you are very brave.

The park’s legend really does end sadly for the horses. The plateau spins itself out to a narrow penninsula about 30 yards wide at one point. The story says that a herd of horses died there from lack of water surrounded 2000 feet below by the Green and Colorado Rivers.

My husband grew up in the desert and we go whenever we can. The desert is so unrelenting, no soft edges. The sculptural shapes of sandstone feel like the bones of the earth, as if the structure of the planet rises to the surface so we can touch it. The sublime spots for me are not the high pinnacles (though I always like to go anywhere high), but where the stone walls come out of the earth. Those are the places that really touch me, where I connect. I figure it’s how I’m wired—to the bones of the planet. Sort of the opposite of being transcendental; how does one transcend stone?

So the picture is a pun of sorts—the dawn arising over the world—the world arising to the dawn—”the arising world” coming into being. A bit of an inside joke.