1996 | Cathedral Valley, Capitol Reef National Park
You can take a road to this planet. Four-wheel drive might help; our route forded a fairly broad stream. We had tossed in a few rocks before crossing, studying our wavelets for signs of uneven depth. But the gravel bar was level, and the water did not come up to our doors.
This valley lives up to its name, and beyond. All around are spires and sharp towers, some with black spines shedding red, red rock. At one place, we found a large chunk of what appeared to be compressed crystalline garbage from outer space. Learning later that it was an old terrestrial seafloor gypsum concretion did not dull our original impression.
▷ When I try to color-correct this negative, it always looks like the surface of Mars. Perhaps it is, or of an even farther red planet. And the Coke bottle is there – if the beverage was indeed sent to Mars, was it properly pressure-reduced at bottling, to have a familiar fizziness in that thinner atmosphere? Maybe someone forgot, and that’s why this bottle blew up.
▷▷ I just remembered my original draft name for this post; it’s updated as of 2021-10-06.