During the U.S. Southwest's monsoon season, in July and August, moisture flowing from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean can be steered across central Colorado's Elk Mountain Range. Here, clouds build during the day so that by late afternoon streams of rain, seen first as virga, pour down on the mountaintops and valley basins, providing a sense of relief by reducing heat during the day, and, most importantly, protecting the alpine forests and meadows against the possibility of fires.

This photograph was taken from the campus of Anderson Ranch Arts Center, which this year celebrates its 60th anniversary. The campus sits on a high, flat parcel at 8,200 feet, offering an unobstructed panorama of the Roaring Fork Valley. Decades ago (I'm guessing sometime in the late 1980s), when the campus was treeless, I photographed this scene at the onset of evening; the daily monsoon ritual of afternoon showers dissipated, and the setting sun side-lit the retreating clouds as a stray sweep of rain brushed Vagneur Mountain.

This view reveals a landscape that appears little changed since the era of the Ute People, who summer-hunted in the high country, and later, homesteaders who ranched sheep and cattle, including the Vagneur family, who settled in the late 19th century beneath their namesake mountain.