— Chapter X of XIII —

The Americas

Two old worlds inside the New. Antelope Canyon on the Navajo Nation — sandstone carved by water over twenty-five million years. And the Inca highlands of Peru — granite carved by hand into terraces, citadels, and an agricultural laboratory of concentric circles, in not quite a hundred. Both built by people whose names for the places are still the names.

Arizona · Perú · 7 Photographs
The deep purple sandstone wall of Antelope Canyon, the surface flowing with layered curves from millennia of flash floods
No. 01 · Chapter X · USA · Navajo Nation

The Slot Canyon

Antelope Canyon · Page, Arizona · morning

Nine in the morning, deep enough into the canyon that the sky is a thin pale line above and the air is ten degrees cooler than the desert outside. The Diné — the Navajo — call this Hazdistazí, "the place where water runs through rocks." The rocks are Navajo Sandstone, deposited as Jurassic dunes 190 million years ago, then carved into these flowing wave-forms by the flash floods that still tear through every monsoon season. The canyon is wider every year, by a few grains of sand. — Photographer's Note

"The land has memory."

— N. Scott Momaday · Kiowa · Pulitzer Prize · 1969

Sun 3 Sep 2023 · 09:16  ·  Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max  ·  Main Camera  ·  6.86mm  ·  f/1.78  ·  1/30s  ·  ISO 1250

Antelope Canyon · Page, Arizona · Navajo Nation 36.8619° N · 111.3743° W
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A shaft of golden sunlight piercing through a narrow opening in the upper rim of Antelope Canyon, illuminating the carved sandstone walls
No. 02 · Chapter X · USA · Navajo Nation

The Sunbeam

Upper Antelope Canyon · approaching noon

An hour and a half later, a hundred metres deeper. Around 11 AM in late summer the sun reaches an angle where it can drop straight down through the slot — narrower than a window — and land on the canyon floor as a single, almost physical shaft of light. The dust in the air becomes visible. The Navajo Diné guides will sometimes scoop a handful of sand from the wall and toss it into the beam, just so you can see the beam itself, not what it touches. Nothing is ever the same shape twice. — Photographer's Note

"Beauty before me, beauty behind me,
beauty above me, beauty below me,
beauty all around me."

— Diné Beauty Way prayer · Navajo Nation

Sun 3 Sep 2023 · 10:43  ·  Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max  ·  Main Camera  ·  6.86mm  ·  f/1.78  ·  1/78s  ·  ISO 250

Upper Antelope Canyon · Page, Arizona 36.8619° N · 111.3743° W
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A wider view through Antelope Canyon's curving sandstone walls, the cave-like passage receding into shadow
No. 03 · Chapter X · USA · Navajo Nation

The Passage

Antelope Canyon · the long view

Forty minutes after No. 01 and a few steps deeper, on a different camera. The passage runs about four hundred metres top to bottom; the walls are sometimes only wide enough for one person at a time and a hundred and twenty feet tall. There are no fossils in here, no graffiti, no electric lights. There are also no flash-flood warnings on the day this was taken — every guide checks the upstream weather hourly, because a thunderstorm twenty miles away in Lake Powell country can fill the canyon to its ceiling in under an hour. Eleven tourists died here in 1997 in exactly that way. — Photographer's Note

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit."

— Edward Abbey · Desert Solitaire · 1968

Sun 3 Sep 2023 · 09:56  ·  Canon EOS R5  ·  RF 15–35mm f/2.8L IS  ·  25mm  ·  f/4  ·  1/15s  ·  ISO 250

Antelope Canyon · Page, Arizona · Navajo Nation 36.8619° N · 111.3743° W
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The concentric circular terraces of Moray in the Peruvian Sacred Valley, descending into a deep amphitheater under the Andean sky
No. 04 · Chapter X · Perú

Moray

Inca agricultural research station · Sacred Valley · ~1450 AD

Twelve concentric terraces dropping a hundred and fifty metres into a natural sinkhole, four kilometres above sea level. The Inca discovered that the air at the bottom of the bowl is five degrees warmer than the air at the rim — so each ring is its own microclimate, mimicking the conditions of every elevation in the empire from coastal desert to puna grassland. They planted maize at one level, potato at another, quinoa at another, and watched what happened. The Spanish, when they arrived in 1532, did not understand what they were looking at. Modern agronomists figured it out around 1970. — Photographer's Note

"Ama suwa, ama llulla, ama qhilla."
Do not steal, do not lie, do not be idle.

— The Inca moral code · Quechua

Thu 12 May 2022 · 10:20  ·  Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max  ·  Main Camera  ·  5.1mm  ·  f/1.6  ·  1/4350s  ·  ISO 32

Moray · Maras · Sacred Valley · Cusco region 13.3296° S · 72.1875° W
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An Andean pasture in Peru's Sacred Valley — green hillside with a weathered wooden fence in the foreground, mountains rising toward a blue sky with cumulus clouds
No. 05 · Chapter X · Perú

The Sacred Valley

Valle Sagrado de los Incas · between Pisac and Ollantaytambo

The Urubamba River runs through this valley, dropping nine hundred metres between the city of Cusco at the top and the cloud forests below Machu Picchu at the bottom. The Inca called the river Willkamayu — "the sacred river" — because they believed its waters were the earthly reflection of the Milky Way overhead. The pasture in the foreground is grazed by sheep and llama in equal numbers, on land farmed for a thousand years. Up where the trees stop and the rock begins are the apus — the mountain spirits — still listed by name in every Quechua-speaking household between here and Lake Titicaca. — Photographer's Note

"Sumak kawsay."
To live well, in harmony with the land.

— Andean philosophy · Quechua

Wed 11 May 2022 · 12:43  ·  Canon EOS R5  ·  RF 15–35mm f/2.8L IS  ·  15mm  ·  f/8  ·  1/1250s  ·  ISO 400

Valle Sagrado · Cusco · Perú 13.2867° S · 72.2103° W
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A swooping vertical view inside Antelope Canyon — the sandstone walls curving overhead like petrified silk, lit from above by a slim band of sky
No. 06 · Chapter X · USA · Navajo Nation

Wind and Stone

Antelope Canyon · the swirl

The wall looks like fabric in mid-flutter, but the agent here is not wind — it is water. A flash flood through a slot canyon travels at thirty miles an hour and carries enough suspended sand to act like wet sandpaper, polishing the walls smooth, fluting them into these silk-like curves over geological time. The whole canyon is a record of every storm Page, Arizona has seen since the Pleistocene. Read top to bottom, it is also a calendar. — Photographer's Note

"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water."

— Loren Eiseley · The Immense Journey · 1957

Sun 3 Sep 2023 · 08:26  ·  Canon EOS R5  ·  RF 15–35mm f/2.8L IS  ·  24mm  ·  f/2.8  ·  1/80s  ·  ISO 16,000

Antelope Canyon · Page, Arizona · Navajo Nation 36.8619° N · 111.3743° W
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Machu Picchu — the Inca citadel — stone terraces and ruins under low cloud, with Huayna Picchu peak rising in the background and the Andean ridges layered behind
No. 07 · Chapter X · Perú

Machu Picchu

Citadel of the Inca · 2,430 metres · c. 1450 AD

The estate of the Inca emperor Pachacuti, built around 1450 on a saddle of granite between two peaks — Machu Picchu (the old peak) behind you, Huayna Picchu (the young peak) in front. It was abandoned around 1572, ninety years after construction began, when the Spanish broke the empire. The local Quechua-speaking farmers never forgot it was there; the world outside the valley did, until Hiram Bingham was led to it by a nine-year-old named Pablito on the morning of 24 July 1911. The stones in the photograph were cut so precisely that even now, six hundred years later, you cannot slide a knife blade between two of them. — Photographer's Note

"Sube a nacer conmigo, hermano."
Rise up and be born with me, brother.

— Pablo Neruda · Alturas de Macchu Picchu · 1947 · Canto XII

Sat 14 May 2022 · 08:30  ·  Canon EOS R5  ·  RF 15–35mm f/2.8L IS  ·  29mm  ·  f/7.1  ·  1/1000s  ·  ISO 400

Machu Picchu · Cusco region · Perú 13.1631° S · 72.5450° W
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