A recent journey with good friends across Southern Utah, from Cedar Mesa into the heart of the Navajo Reservation, will forever rank in our pantheon of road trips.

From Arches, Dead Horse State Park, and Canyonlands, to Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, and Valley of the Gods, we went onward across Bears Ears to Glen Canyon. It was exhilarating. We made it up to Hunts Mesa — our Navajo guides’ vehicles crawling over boulders and along the cliff’s edge — to look upon Monument Valley from above. A few days later we went up the absurd zigzag route of the Moki Dugway, carved into the side of vertical mesa. It was not quite so arduous a journey as the one to Hunts Mesa, perhaps, but one we’ll never forget.

And then there was our return to Glen Canyon, and to Cathedral in the Desert, which only in recent years has emerged from under hundreds of feet of water. It was particularly fun being there with Eric Balken of the Glen Canyon Institute, as well as Will Buckley, the young filmmaker who co-directed and produced a brilliant documentary on the canyon’s return to life. Pushing into 50-Mile Canyon, walking in bare feet through the warm water and the twists and turns of the canyon, was sublime. The Western sublime.

Landscape photography is one of the joys of living in the West because it forces you ever onward, up early, out late. This particularly gallery will exist only for a few weeks, at which point it will be expanded into a celebration of the Western landscapes from this and other trips. Until then, enjoy these images from the autumn of 2025.