The Land That Planted Itself in My Dreams

This is a special image for me - not because of its technical qualities, but because of the atmosphere it captures: the surreal landscape, the dramatic storm light, and my long personal history with this place.

I photographed this scene from the Green River Overlook atop the Island in the Sky mesa in Canyonlands National Park. From this high plateau, the view stretches across thousands of square miles of some of the most remote country in the United States. Fifteen hundred feet below the overlook, the White Rim extends endlessly through impossibly rugged canyon country. Another thousand feet below that, the Green River snakes quietly toward its eventual confluence with the Colorado River.

On my first trip to southern Utah in 1986, I spent several nights camping just a short walk from where this photograph was taken. Back then, the area was rougher, quieter, and far less visited than it is today. The immensity of the landscape and the overwhelming silence affected me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. After returning home to New York, this view lingered in my mind for years. 

It haunted my dreams.

In the decades that followed, I returned again and again, often with close friends. I backpacked from the Island in the Sky down to the White Rim and spent unforgettable nights beneath impossibly dark skies. I explored farther still, eventually reaching the river itself.

Yet the more intimately I came to know this country, the more mysterious it became.

Some of my most vivid dreams came while sleeping on the White Rim, immersed deep within the heart of canyon country. Many of those dreams were accompanied by the sound of a crying woman - a presence that felt lost somewhere along the rivers and labyrinths of the desert Southwest. Strangely enough, years later I discovered that it is an experience that many others have described after spending time in this remarkable landscape.

The rational, science-and-engineering side of me never expected that. The more open-minded part of me welcomed it.

That tension is part of what keeps drawing me back. The more I learn about this land, the more it reminds me how much remains beyond understanding. Just when I think I’ve grasped something essential about canyon country, it humbles me again. It reveals another layer of mystery, another reminder that not everything meaningful can be explained.

Over the past four decades, I’ve explored countless places throughout the canyon country of the Southwest. What they all share is their ability to humble me - to remind me how vast the world is, how small we are within it, and how extraordinary this adventure called life truly is.