Watching the landscape bleed out to support a dying reservoir.

Desert oasis with David.

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument

January 2026

Iron marbles basking in the warm winter light on yesterday's walk. A day spent in conversation with canyons and stone, their swirls waves and stripes chatter in a foreign tongue I've become familiar with. I was gifted with pleasant company, both my partner and the prints of fellow residents.

Moments from my morning in the field. Mud lines remembering prior floods, soft rays of light illuminating raptor nests, and frigid water cascading over beaver complexes. How humbling it is to wake up with this canyon.

Always grateful to spend a day on slickrock. My partner and I explored an area that has caught our eye from multiple vantage points over the past few months. The sandstone textures we encountered were dreamy, and the stone stretched on for miles in all directions.

A sunset that set the mind ablaze. Taken in town months ago.

Winters in this tiny desert town are slow and secluded. My partner returned from holidays spent in the midwest and I traveled through three hours of heavy, sticky mist and fog to run town errands and pick him up from the small airport there.

Second time painting with gouache, inspired by sunsets and summer haze on the front range in addition to a post I saw here on Bluesky but cannot for the life of me find.

Short jog on the outskirts of town to get a glimpse of the main canyon just before sunset.

My birthday gift of gouache paint arrived and I spent half an hour painting this photo from last July on the Monument. I was sick with a stomach bug between fire assignments and wanted the comfort of cool canyon sand, the sticky heat of riparian corridors, and the camaraderie of stagnant pools.

Merry Christmas from my favorite local wash bottom. Here the girls stand at the base of our typical turn around, but on occassion we venture further back to explore the numerous canyons that branch out further upstream.

Field work in the Claron Formation today, sprinkled with tertiary volcanics.

More sedimentary canyon forms. Hiked back to where the Morrison Formation meets Entrada sandstone, my favorite of the region.

Sunset stroll through town.

It's that time of year where the evening glow sets desert walls ablaze. The onset of winter in this landscape is marked by the chill of cool air slinking into shadowed valley and canyon bottoms, but these sunsets warm the soul.

In the office today reminiscing the full moon's rise over Mt. Ellen.

A looped stroll through a clunky canyon bottom. Stepping over an ephemeral wash littered with cobbles of various origins. Pressed and altered lifeforms embedded in canyon walls form impermeable coal seams. Iron tinted springs laden with sediment and slime surface and quickly freeze into milky ice.

Sunbeams lapping up against dissected sandstone during our evening hike near town.