Snow Cliffs Ablaze

This was the after-dinner walk. When we lived in St. George, Snow Canyon was where we often went on a weeknight when you wanted somewhere astonishing without making a day of it — an enormous amount of country packed into a small footprint, and almost entirely ignored by the traffic heading up to Zion and Bryce. Cedar Breaks did the same job when we wanted elevation.

It’s also the only place in Utah I’ve met a rattlesnake, which crossed the path in front of us on one of exactly these evenings.

Not that night. That night it was lizards, small birds, and bats once the sun went. We took the Petrified Dunes trail out from the parking lot and then went off it, up onto one of the formations, which is where this comes from.

The title is about heat rather than light — the light that evening was even. Everything you’re looking at is petrified dune: white sand, orange sand, formations banded red and white, and black volcanic rock in among it, all within a few minutes’ walk. There’s a path threaded through the rock if you look for it.

The sky was stacking up thick and blue-grey and looked like it meant it. It didn’t rain. It rarely does — summer in the desert deals in that particular kind of false hope.