Gambel Oaks and Wall
Escalante Wilderness, Utah

This is a personal selection gleaned from those blissful fairyland side canyons in the fabled Escalante. Springing out of my backpacking tent early enough to chase down another magical dawn in my personally favorite tender wilderness, I had my heart set upon capturing this delicate filigreed scene that filled me with fondness for my mentor Eliot Porter and his indelible influence – complete with his treasured "re-reflected light".

I set up over the little stones I'd marked it with the evening before, and waited patiently for that sandstone wall to glow resplendent in the radiant pink light box cast by a sheer unobstructed wall behind me across a narrow gorge. I was drawn in by the exquisitely expressive complexity of these oaks, which I understand to be remarkably old for their modest size... at perhaps a century.