Desert Tortoise

My wife and I spent our St. George years half-looking for a desert tortoise and never once found one together. I saw exactly one, on a solo morning hike in Red Cliffs while she was away for work, and that was the only one either of us managed in all that time. She never saw one at all.

We’d driven over to Snow Canyon that evening because the sky from our house looked like it might do something. Half past seven on a late July evening, an hour or so short of sunset and right at the start of golden hour. This is from the north side of the Petrified Dunes trail looking north toward the white cliffs; I was working to get the orange sandstone and the white in one frame, and the black lava across the middle distance came free.

The shell never occurred to me while I was standing there. I knew the shape of that dome was reminding me of something and I couldn’t place it, and it wasn’t until I was editing that it landed — ridged, plated, domed, sitting up out of the desert like something ancient that stopped moving a long time ago and hasn’t necessarily finished.

Snow Canyon sits inside the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, which exists in large part to protect the Mojave desert tortoise — the same reserve behind The World Below. I never saw one there.

This was also the same July evening as Snow Cliffs Ablaze, shot later up on the dunes.