Before the Rain

Bryce Canyon, Utah

What stayed with me was the smell of the rain before it arrived.

The air was quiet. Beyond the rim, the landscape held more detail than I could take in at once. I stopped trying to take it all in.

For a while, the things that had been occupying my mind no longer needed an answer. They were still part of my life, but they weren’t the whole of it. There was also this view. This air. The possibility of rain.

I felt grateful to be there.

It is easy to make even a moment like that into something useful—a photograph, a lesson, a reason the trip was worthwhile. But what I appreciated most was simpler: I could stop thinking about what needed doing and just exist.

I don’t know how long I stood there. What I remember is that, for once, I wasn’t thinking about what came next.

From the same visit: Bryce Canyon — Stone Beneath a Wide Sky, a photographic entry in Places of Stillness.