Broken Bow Arch, Escalante, Utah.

Spring 2018. We hiked into Willow Gulch in late afternoon, and I remember feeling embraced by the warm sandstone tones of the Navajo Sandstone after a cold, blue-tinted winter spent in Yellowstone. The canyon opened up around us, ledges of Kayenta Formation creating benches where water seeped and cottonwood trees took root. Their new leaves were that brilliant lime green that only happens in spring, fluttering and catching sunlight, glowing against the red rock.

Above the canyon floor, a thick fin of Navajo Sandstone, ancient Jurassic dunes compressed into stone, projected from the north wall. Broken Bow Arch had carved itself through that fin over millennia, its triangular aperture framing the sky.

March 2020. The world had gone still and strange. I was stuck inside, missing the feel of moving through a landscape, so I painted my way back. I pulled up an image from that warm spring day in 2018. Painting with black and white acrylics, I stripped away the color, clarifying what I was really remembering: the arch's curve, the play of light and shadow on stone, the contrast between the cottonwoods' soft movement and the canyon's permanence.

Painting became a way to travel when I couldn't. Each brushstroke was a return to that warmth, that openness, that particular quality of spring light in the desert. A reminder that the places we love hold still, waiting, even when we can't reach them.

While the landscape endures on geologic timescales, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument's protections remain under threat. Conservation requires continued advocacy and vigilance.

Black and white acrylic on paper

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