.the river roils, red chile-tainted cafe con leche, around the great bends, each new cut created by the opposite offset of the previous..the cliffs hang above, sheer, silent walls set in talus slopes of sand, boulders, and rocks the size of ancient buildings..the only visible inhabitants are two ravens shadowing across the sandstone faces

at side canyons, where streams power endlessly through ruins of inhuman cities of fallen stone, the snowtopped peaks , blue with distance below the rio colorado Navajo sandstone wilderness, can be glimpsed. Their blanketed pure fields of white merging with rolling clouds racing in with a new front....

..the clouds thicken and lower until the draping tendrils of rain, grey white contrasting with the black wall clouds of the storm cell, sweep down on the desert, obliterating the long view and closing the world down to a driving, midnight insular vortex of rain and hail. Lightning races from heaven to earth and back in... quivering towers, the sound of the molecules of air exploding in symphonies of primordial power...

..then the world lightens and grows ever more still. The setting sun's rays streak beneath the lifting storm,fireing the red spires against its purple retreat. A raven caws up the canyon. The voice of river and wind intone together, sparkled by tiny birdcalls. A coyote slips across the tip of a nameless mesa and drops ...with a last suspicious glance into a wash...Trav rides on, quiet and small...

It was after dark when he came to the crossroads.