(There use to be pictures, but in transferring between blogs they have been lost)
Words cannot adequately describe Horseshoe Canyon and my experience there in the early morning light but I'll do my best here.
The morning was chilly to say the least and there was a slight chance of rain but nothing I couldn't handle. I was ready to be soaked in my jeans, beanie, plaid shirt and hoodie if necessary. The walk to the edge wasn't difficult by any means but I think (hope) the altitude mixed with the sand made me a little breathless. Untrained lungs aside, I walked up to the rim to see a couple off to my right and another photographer to the slight right. I decided to take my spot several feet from him and leave the couple to their romantic sunrise.
I walked right up to the edge and and immediately traded breathless for a second of vertigo. I don't know if it was my mind taking in the depths or if it was the low light but my introduction to Horseshoe Bend felt a little surreal. Goregeous and surreal. After the initial overwhelm mellowed out I started talking to the photographer beside me about lenses and travels and all sorts of stuff until the first light really took hold.
We chatted as the sun came up and we speculated on what the light might do. Maybe a few minutes into the sunrise a rainbow broke through to our left and slowly spanned the whole bend. To be at this place, so early in the morning, on this trip across the country, to move to a state I didn't really know anyone in... to be gifted with temperate weather and a canyon spanning rainbow? Spiritual, signs, serendipity or anything else, I was filled with feelings of grace, gratitude and awe. So many thank yous ran through my mind.
I have never felt more at peace than I did in those first moments of the sun coming up. Everything that I had been unsure felt right.
After the rainbow left, my new friend and I were joined by another solo photographer, (I was the only solo female I saw ever on my trip) who had a drone with a go pro connected to it. Photog number one left us and I went back to the edge while photog number two set the drone out for a little flight. We talked a little more, and as more people came to the edge everything got a little nosier. I couldn't believe it when I looked at the time and realized I had been there for over two hours. When I decided it was time to go, I said goodbye to my drone wielding new friend (his name is Todd and you can find his work at I Shoot America) and I walked back to the parking lot filled with joy.
The hype that surrounds the Grand Canyon as well as this place, Horseshoe Bend, cannot be denied. It's for a reason. No picture will ever be able to capture what it feels like to see this place with your own eyes. Not a single one. These pictures that I took, they look great, but they are a tiny, tiny margin of what it was really like to be there, the cannot convey the depths and the feelings that come with looking down over an unguarded edge. They don't stand a chance.
If you are questioning your faith in life, if you need to reconnect, if you just want to see something beautiful, I urge you to go to Horseshoe Bend. Go now. Get there just before sunrise when it's quiet and calm. Go when it's colder and not a tourist season, go to a spot that doesn't get talked about as much... just go. And then take it all in.
Up next: New Mexico to Oklahoma
xoxo
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