Lucky

The first time I visited Horseshoe Bend, there was nothing between you and a thousand feet of empty air.

No guardrails. No paved overlook. Just desert running straight to the edge, then dropping almost vertically to the Colorado River below. To make matters worse, the wind was coming hard from behind us, gusting well over 45 miles per hour. I'm not particularly fond of heights, and standing anywhere near that edge felt like the desert itself was trying to push me over it.

I started well back from the cliff and slowly army-crawled toward the edge, dragging myself across the sand until I could finally set up the camera. Even lying flat on my stomach, with the wind whipping sand across me, it didn't feel safe. I got the shot anyway.

Looking back, the photograph is a reminder that sometimes the line between getting the photograph and becoming part of the landscape is thinner than you realize. I called it Lucky for a reason.