Etchings

South Coyote Buttes, Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, Arizona
Still life is all around me, and time is so short in the late afternoon. I am racing up and down sandstone troughs, following curves and benches among the beehives and turrets, deep in the Paria wilderness, with a vague idea of where I need to be when darkness falls. On this small plateau, a whirlwind of Navajo sandstone greets me, delicately lit as the sun flashes between intermittent clouds. Inanimate, the formation swirls, like a vortex before my eyes. It's just sand, I think. Remnants of a sand dune sea, whose inner layers cemented as more and more sand piled on above, tinted by the minerals that leach out as water percolated through, sculpted in time by the endless wind. That wind reclaims each grain of sand, one by one, honing the edges as it engraves a description of time. I am outside a frozen vortex, but within my own, not as visible as this. And for awhile we collide and move as one. The energy is different, slower. It's not so unlike us, when our circles of life meet, and move, together, against the wind/with the wind. But sharing souls in real life is different than still life, and I step away, with a last look at the aura etched in stone, just as yours is etched in me, always.
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