The Farm

One early morning I stood on Tseyi Point, overlooking Canyon de Chelly. I had been there enough before that I had recorded all the usual, recognizable pictures.

I wondered what I could do this time that was new, or at least less commonly recognized. I looked across at the horizon as one is compelled to do from that vantage point. But for some reason, I looked down from my more distant gaze. I saw the neat rows of a farm at the base of the cliffs on which I was standing. I had seen it before and knew it was there, yet I hadn’t listened. That morning I heard.

As the sun slowly rose, I recorded many images from my perch, a good 500+ feet above. Looking down on things is thrilling, aggrandizing, and endangering, particularly when the bottom is farther away than respectable minds could contemplate surviving.

Slowly the sun wandered high enough to find its way into the canyon. It touched the tops of the trees and then shrubs, grasses, and finally the ground in various triangles and shimmers. All the while, the walls glowed an ever greater intensity of yellow-orange-red.

After the sun was up enough that the contrasts intensified and the colors began to fade, I left.

I had had my golden hour for that day. At those times, I am always reminded that some make light of golden hour photography, since it is a time when “everyone can get a good picture”. That derision neglects the fact that something more important is going on, besides the good light for photographers. There is something sacred about its fleeting beauty and the way the day presents itself so carefully. Even without a camera, it is a moment of belonging to the day.

Walking away, I wondered if I had I gotten enough of the “right ones”. Maybe I had missed a particular shot because of the camera or me or whatever. It was the usual photographer’s angst at the end of a photo session. The worry passed quickly, since I was used to those thoughts and found them now more a nuisance. I could do no more that day. Plus I wouldn’t even know what I had for likely several months, when I would look through these images from the comfort of my studio, far away and likely in the midday or evening hours.

Those morning moments when the sun glances across the land are special, even though they last only a few minutes. It is the knowledge that this time will pass momentarily that makes it so special. Even knowing it will happen again tomorrow doesn’t reduce its significance, since this time will never happen again.

For me days like this one move from a slow, inviting, timeless conversation to a firmer voice that says it is now time to get on with the day, whatever that may be for each day. Perhaps I have lived too many decades of momentary breaths at the start of the day before the work began.

As I later looked through and thought about these images in my studio, I began to remember them in many different ways. I eventually came to this small series that conveys my experience of that brief time.

The first print is more of an impression of the farm house and field from the time before the sun shown directly on it. It is not a depiction of reality, but a print with more feeling than reality.

The second print shows the cliffs superimposed over multiple images of the field. I realized that they protected and nurtured the farm as they slowly eroded from wind and the scarce rains. The river also brought nutrients from upstream and likely flooded in the spring to deposit more soil.

The third print shows the happy dance of light glinting across the tops of new plants and old rows of dirt. There are multiple merged images of the field rows in this print.

Lastly the fields are at work, doing their usual growing thing that they do. What appears to be a road is actually the river in its muddy spring flow. Here too there are multiple images of the fields and river superimposed to convey a bit of mystery about it all.

Tseyi means “in the rock” in the language of the Diné, the Navajo. This farm was in the rock, on the floor of the canyon. It belongs to someone I do not know. Yet what they were doing meant a lot to me that morning and provided a chance to express it artistically.

Sometimes it is the little things in the grand view of life that pull at the heart most.