Winding through Cottonwood Road, up through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Painted hills and the vertebrae of the cockscomb jut into the air along the canyon floor. 

The rabbit brush is blooming. Warm yellow blooms with a scent unique to this desert. It dots the hillsides and ground somehow finding water in this impossibly dry space.

I’ll never tire of the palette of the desert. Burnt yellows, rusty reds, charcoal grays and the black that paints the hills and canyon walls. Dark greens of junipers and pinons and the dusty green of sage contrast the warmth. Every shade of turquoise spreads across the sky.

We pull off at an arch, the iconic desert structure. They seem impossibly delicate and yet weather thousands of years. This one is huge, towering hundreds of feet into the air. The interplay of the sky enclosed by rock is an enticing image. 

I hike up to it through the rabbit brush and sage. The sandy path turns to slickrock and slopes up towards the arch. 

Photographing the desert has always been a challenge for me. In retrospect, photographs always look different than what I was focusing on at the moment. There’s always excess. I try to wrestle this arch into a frame. I walk one way then the next trying to find the perfect angle of the sky through the rock. I notice the deep shadows, slope of the arch's pillars, a raven circling overhead. I’m trying to capture the feeling I have, like being in a cathedral, looking up at a carefully crafted ceiling that has stood for lifetimes. I want that feeling in the picture. 

I finally choose an angle and snap the photo. Back in the car, of course there’s more in the photo than I saw. I was focusing on the arch, but in the photo is an old juniper center stage, contrasting with the yellows, reds, and soft browns of the arch. It gives life to the picture and completes the color palette of the desert.