Dilemma: passenger or pilot? Make a photograph or take a photograph? Go along for the ride or drive? Okay, you get the distinction. Allow me to explain.

First, logistics and a few thoughts. After photographing the Factory Butte area on Day 3 I stayed in Hanksville and got up at dawn yesterday morning to be back to see it as the sun rose,

which had a theatrical quality to it, as though a Wagner opera was playing. This was so good the actual making of the photographs seemed perfunctory.

After heading back to the motel and loading up I was off, heading back to Moab, about 3-4 hours away. Take note here if you choose this trip: fill up in Hanskville. There is no gas or anything for well over 100 miles of endless desert. The southern route back to Moab takes you through Hite and the northern tip of Lake Powell which is in the Glen Canyon region.This is simply breathtaking country, big and unfathomable on a scale difficult to understand. I found myself thinking of when this was all formed, how huge forces acted to make this landscape, how erosion, wind and water sculpted it and, today, how years of drought and over utilization of the Colorado River's water makes for a lake lower than it was even eight years ago. 

This a bank of rock I have been photographing for years:

First 2010:

It seems a picture can speak a thousand words.

Did you know that by the time the Colorado River winds its way through the American West and exits in Mexico, it isn't? There is no water left for we have used it all, for irrigation, but also for human consumption as well.

Well, I have more to write but will save it for perhaps this post as part two, we will see. I still have to address the "Dilemma" part.