Cowboy Through Monument Valley

Monument Valley is less a valley than a wide red plain on the Navajo Nation, along the Arizona-Utah line, with sandstone buttes standing as much as 1,000 feet above the floor. The Navajo name, Tsé Bii' Ndzisgaii, means valley of the rocks. Since 1958 it has been a Navajo tribal park.

The buttes are what is left of a plateau. Each sits on a base of Organ Rock shale, rises in sheer walls of de Chelly sandstone and wears a harder cap that slows the wear from above. The red comes from iron oxide in the weathered rock.

The light does most of the work here. The buttes face every direction, so at sunrise and sunset one side of each one burns orange while the other drops into violet shadow, and the colors change by the minute.

The painting sets three buttes against a sunset that fills the sky with orange and violet cloud. The left one carries a thin spire off its shoulder; the middle one stands far off, small against the glow. In the foreground a lone rider on a dark horse picks his way through the sage, heading out into the valley as the light goes.