A river traversing a desert might seem unlikely, but there are several, including the Colorado River and its many tributaries. One of these, on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona, is Kaibito Creek. This remote seasonal stream is visited less often now than in the past, and even then, visitors were rare. However, rivers are not the only thing that carve through the desert scenery. Hundreds of slot canyons carve into the red rock country of the Colorado Plateau, spanning southern Utah and northern Arizona. Towering soft sandstone walls outline these narrow channels, which are formed and eroded by periodic flash floods from monsoonal thunderstorms.

Slot canyons have become more popular, even in this remote part of the Southwest. However, in 1998, a few years after I took this photograph, the Navajo Nation closed the creek and its canyon to public access due to increased trespassing across their reservation and through residential areas, which had disturbed livestock, led to littering, damaged fragile archaeological sites, and sometimes necessitated dangerous rescues of stranded hikers.

Cautiously, I entered Upper Kaibito Canyon, its upper reaches originating just below a water tank off a dirt road, miles from any town. The canyon's entrance, hidden, even from a short distance, suddenly appeared beneath my feet. I was peering down into a V-shaped crevasse that closed in on itself. Balanced on the steeply sloped sides of this narrow gorge, I placed my legs on either side of the precarious gully. The canyon was deeply shadowed; sunlight bounced off the rim and then, again, off its lower walls, creating a subtle twilight-like glow. In the darkness, barely discernible, the resulting photograph revealed much more than I could see then.