Streaming Colors
Image code: #de000970
Colorful blooms bring to life a desert alluvial fan.
Alien Tree
Image code: #dn000968
Solitary cottonwood tree in autumn coat in an other-worldly landscape of desert badlands.
Aglow
Image code: #dc001087
Sliver of morning sunlight paints a desert butte in golden hues before storm clouds close in again.
Survivor
Image code: #dc000694
Shadscale plant reaching through the cracks for what little moisture and nutrients it can find in the dry desert floor, defying the odds.
Radiant Pastels
Image code: #de000226
The faint glow of pre-dawn light brings to life the delicate pastels in a slope of clay desert badlands.
Future Fossil
Image code: #de000253
A skull half-sunk in solid clay. With each rare rainfall, it will sink a little deeper and after that may never reach the surface again. Or, it may become fossilized and some day, perhaps millions of years from now, be revealed to other eyes.
First Blooms
Image code: #de000916
Purple scorpionweed flowers, and a single yellow bee plant, emerge from cracked desert ground after years of waiting for rain.
Badlands in Bloom
Image code: #de000996
Purple scorpionweed flowers in a desert wash. This phenomenon occurs only once every few years. At the time of writing, it has been nearly a full decade since the last bloom of this magnitude.
Rare Beauty
Image code: #de001035
Most other times, this area is an arid plain of cracked earth where few hardy shrubs barely survive. On rare occasions, perhaps once in a decade if not longer, when conditions are right, dormant seeds burst out in a stunning display of flowers.
Desolate Perch
Image code: #de002594
Lonesome raven surveys a surreal landscape of painted hills.
Verdant Defiance
Image code: #de002647
Hardy shadscale plants manage to survive in an area once known by its early Mormon settlers as, The Baddest of the Badlands.
Earthly Delights
Image code: #de002644
Swaths of colorful clay, sandstone, and shale.
Desert Jigsaw Puzzle
Image code: #dg000065
Cracked drying mud on desert floor. The gradation in color indicate level of moisture still remaining in each piece (they dry from the outside in). Recent raindrops dotted the clay with small impact-craters.
Blue Grit
Image code: #de003169
Mineral-rich hill of textured bentonite clay.
Clay Calligraphy
Image code: #dg000062
Deep cracks in desert floor.
Fluted Flanks
Image code: #de002739
Layers of ancient clay revealed in eroded cliff face.
Illuminated Ridges
Image code: #dh000490
Ridges of the blue hills, dusted in snow, glow in the cold light of winter.
Ancient Flow
Image code: #di000872
Eroded ancient sea bed, now arid desert badlands.
Into the Blue
Image code: #di000968
Eroded slopes of blue bentonite clay, large enough to dwarf large sandstone boulders.
Do Not Disturb
Image code: #di001117
Clay badlands are fairly soft. Being dry almost year-round, footprints and tire tracks may leave lasting marks. The proper way to wander in these places is in the narrow washes among the hills, which are first to get smoothed out with any precipitation.
Timelines
Image code: #di001578
Alluvial drainage patterns in clay badlands.
Evening Falls
Image code: #di001572
This is the view from what used to be one of my favorite campsites, where I have never seen another person for a period of about fifteen years. Today, it is a popular spot among photographers and the solitude is gone.
Convolutions
Image code: #di001577
Convoluted alluvial patterns and buttes in clay badlands. Once a remote and unknown place where one could spend days in solitude, now becoming rapidly popular in the age of online sharing.
Undulations
Image code: #di000958
Sedimented clay, once the bottom of an ancient sea, now desert badlands.
Launch Pad
Image code: #di001582
The view from the edge of a sandstone shelf above a vast area of badlands.
As the Crow Flies
Image code: #di001614
Soft light meandering among eroded desert hills.
Dignity of Light
Image code: #di001606
Gentle light in the blue desert.
Life, Just Barely
Image code: #di001832
An unusually cold winter day in the badlands. Very rarely visited, even in other times, it is unlikely that many people ever witnessed the cold desolation of winter in these places.
Rolling Stones
Image code: #di001591
Broken sandstone boulders strewn along an eroded clay slope.
Desolate Peace
Image code: #di001838
An unusually cold and foggy winter day in the badlands.
A Day of Rest
Image code: #dn000126
Desert butte glows in early morning light after an overnight snow storm.
Tumblers
Image code: #di001917
Large caprock boulders making their way down an eroding slope of bentonite clay.
Resting Place
Image code: #dn000123
Desert badlands under a blanket of fresh snow, viewed from a lofty sandstone ledge.
Winter Minuet
Image code: #dn000146
Dormant cottonwood trees engulfed in wintry fog, looking like they are swaying to music only they can hear.
Timelessness
Image code: #dn000277
Eroded badlands, formerly deposits from the bottom of an ancient shalow sea. I remember fondly the days before this place was “discovered” in recent years. At the time, you could camp on this ledge for days, and it was nearly inconceivable that another person would show up—a place of peace and a perfect setting for contemplation.
Winter Cascade
Image code: #dn000167
Fresh snow fills the grooves of an eroded desert slope.
Purple Pathway
Image code: #dn000512
Small shadscale shrubs persist in a small wash in mineral-rich clay hills.
Pillowy Pathways
Image code: #dn000520
Desert mountains covered in snow loom above a landscape of pink desert clay hills.
Gentle Erosion
Image code: #dn000712
Sandstone boulders making their way down an eroded clay hill.
Skeletal Remains
Image code: #dn000713
The skeletons of juniper trees remain standing, sometimes for decades after their death.
Life on Mars
Image code: #dq000043
Shadscale plants emerge in an alluvial wash carved in red clay, after recent rains.
Path of Water and Light
Image code: #e000013
First light illuminating an alluvial wash in clay badlands.
Early Glow
Image ID: #e000066
Early sunlight ignites colorful desert plants among clay hills.
Getting Late
Image ID: #e000062
Late afternoon light casts shadows on desert plants growing among clay hills.
Home Colors
Image ID: #e000063
"I am not that presumptuous to think I could speak or paint or write the natural history of my home colors. I know only that they are to blame for intent and motion, for an asymmetrical journey of wonder and of trouble. Light can run a person’s time and moods; it can explain everything." ~Ellen Meloy
Herringbone Hills
Image ID: #e000090
Clay hills tinted with colorful minerals, form a herringbone pattern.
Resting Sea
Image ID: #e000108
Once a seabed, now colorful undulating hills.
Kind of Blue
Image ID: #e000064
Clay slopes tinted in blue and purple minerals.
Just Add Water
Image ID: #dn001156
A rare bloom of yellow beeplant among the badlands, after some well-timed rain.
Still Mighty
Image ID: #e000065
A larghe section of an ancient fossilized tree rests over mineral-rich clay.
Gilded Path
Image ID: #dn001149
Beeplant flowers along an alluvial channel in the badlands.
Unpatriotic
Image code: #f000002
Velvestial
Image code: #f000014
Scalloped Edges
Image code: #f000001
The Profound Silence
Image ID: #dh000653
“All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.” ~Herman Melville
The Divine Soil
Image code: #dl000189
This then is life,
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.
How curious! how real!
Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.
~Walt Whitman
Despite It All
Image code: #e000171
That some, trees or humans, thrive where others see only “bad” lands, “bad” situations, “bad” light, is testament for both the tenacity of those who thrive and for the lack of imagination of those who don’t.
Out of Space, Out of Time
Image code: #f000108
“By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule —
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE — out of TIME.”
~Edgar Allan Poe
Lamentation
Image code: #f000131
A Seeker's Dream
Image code: #f000109
Distant desert places touched by storm light.
Heart of the Desert
Image code: #dn001178
Fracture patterns in frozen and cracked mud, in a desert canyon.
Petrified Flame
Image code: #dl000407
Funneled
Image code: #f001030
Blocks of sandstone caprock making their way down a wash among clay hills.
Recorded History
Image ID: #dn000477
Maybe Tomorrow
Image ID: #dn000445
Empty Stage
Image ID: #dn000448
The Good Badlands
These arid places of clay and shale are the backdrop to harsh, desolate, and infinitely delicate vignettes. To a casual visitor, it is a sun baked wasteland of lifeless grey earth, caked and cracked and carved by rare floods. To the patient observer, however, there is great beauty here, delicate and subtle, but it does not reveal itself easily. You have to want to see it, and be willing to work hard for it. On rare years, wildflowers burst into stunning display of color, transforming the desert into a veritable garden for just few precious days; miss it and you may never get another chance. This area is also coveted by off-road enthusiasts, in many places despite legal closures to protect the fragile ecosystem. This is a place where humans always struggled, yet always fought for.
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