Windworked

The permit for South Coyote Buttes comes out of a lottery, and the year I applied I put in for both South and North. South came through on the first attempt. I’ve never once drawn North, in all the years since.

Getting in was the part I hadn’t thought about properly. I had no experience driving on deep sand and no interest in learning out there, so we booked a guide company and they took the four of us — me, my wife and two guides — out in a Suburban. It remains the sketchiest stretch of road I’ve been on, and we went past at least two vehicles that had already buried themselves in it, which did nothing to settle my nerves and a great deal to make me glad I wasn’t the one driving.

I’ve deliberately never said exactly where this pillar stands. The ground out there is fragile, this particular spot isn’t well known, and I’d rather not be the reason that changes.

The sandstone has long sweeping bands running through it and the fins in the foreground repeat the same lines, and since there was a real wind blowing that afternoon I decided to let the rock tell me what to do with the sky. Fifteen stops of filter, a tethered release and a hundred and sixty-four seconds pulled the cloud into the same sort of sweep as the stone underneath it. Working the exposure out took an app on my phone and a fair amount of faith, this being some years before I’d heard of PhotoPills.

We saw other vehicles over the course of the day, but never another person.