I thought I'd be missing the forest and mountains by now. Missing the cool air and the flowers... but I'm not. The desert out here is stunning, and amazingly alive. Alive with colour, sounds, sights and hidden goings on of the secret animal world.
Out of the shimmering lines on the road as it stretches into the liquid horizon of mid-day loom monstrous shapes. Shapes dredged up from the psyche, planted there by every darn western movie and image of the west as it never really was. Towering and majestic buttes and mesas of powerful red rock thundering up from the sand and dust and heat glazed highways...
This is Monument Valley, home of THE image of the west. 
It adorns movie posters of yesteryear and guide books of today, you'll have seen this place even if you have no idea what I'm talking about. As we speed in from the north even I feel like I *must* have been here before, the road stretching across the plain towards, and seemingly into, the ancient red plinths.
We're on Navajo nation land, marked by dusty private roads firing into the wilderness in dead straight lines, and twisting old wooden shacks on the side of the highway selling every type of jewellery imaginable as long as its made of beads... Its hot. Its bright, like fresh molten steel covers the sky, it hurts to look up, and its just amazing. Lines of cars on nearby roads back up to gaze in wonder and they all twinkle and sharply flare in the sun while they shuffle past.
We retreat into our hotel room for the afternoon (yes - hotel - its too hot to camp here!), and venture out towards sunset to explore the area on the *very* rugged loop road through the valley. Its wonderful. Bumpy, but fun, and a jaw gaping view at every turn, heads craning upward to try and take it all in. The monoliths are even bigger up close (obviously...much as Father Ted would explain to Dougal about cows). We get snap happy during the magic hour and get some alright shots, which is inevitable if you take thousands of pics law of averages says at least one has to be good...
We strike some luck, and as the sun dips below the sandy horizon we're left by ourselves on the valley floor, standing in the warm sand, bare footed, the girls playing and looking for animal tracks... theres evidence of life everywhere here... coyotes, lizards, jackrabbits, beetles... crickets singing softly... The air cools and the sky turns a bruised purple and all that's left is silhouettes, stars, the low smell of the stunted grasses and warped and hardy trees and the happy sounds of the girls as they jump around in the deep sand and try to follow lizard footprints in the fading light...
