Hunt's Mesa shows the side of Monument Valley you can't get from the highway — a high, wide view reached by an old mining trail and a guide who knows where it goes.
We left The View Hotel in the afternoon with a Navajo guide. Two hours out, most of it off-road: deep sand taken fast, then the rim of the cliffs along an old uranium haul route. By the time we reached the overlook, it already felt a long way from anything.
Our sunset spot looked out over the back of the valley. A storm moved through beneath us, dragging shadow and hard edges across ground that usually reads flat at that hour. We shot it until the light went. Our guide left partway through to set camp and came back for us after sunset.
We came into a fire and steaks on the grate. Wind and rain hit not long after and pushed us into the tents for the night. Nothing between us and the weather up there, and it let us know.
We were up before light. Whatever had come through in the night had gone, and taken the wind with it — the mesa was dead still, the air rinsed clean. The color came in slowly, pale, then pink, then the buttes separating out of the dark one at a time until you could finally see how far the valley ran.
We ate, then started the long descent. The route back took in Spider Arch, a double arch, Native ruins, and a run of dinosaur tracks pressed into sandstone. Each one older than the last.
