A local group, “Art as Antibodies” asked for pieces about how we’re coping with the Covid lockdown. I sent a painting of the wide and windy desert, which is how—and where—I cope. Not covidy enough, they said. So I sent a corvid.
Slot canyons are spooky, mysterious, intimate. Ravens nest along the rim. When you emerge from the dark strictures of a slot canyon you feel reborn.
We followed the ridge for a while, then dropped into the dry gorge. Seasonal flash floods had carved an amphitheater, huge, cool, and dim. The east rim, where the low sun struck, was brilliant yellow against the cobalt sky.
The floods had rolled big stones around and around until they drilled deep holes into the bedrock. One shaft was nine feet deep. How many millennia of intermittent rains does it take to scour a pit like that?
WORLD-BUILDING and WILDERNESS: 