Coal Mine Canyon

Author's Comments

The first time I drove out to Coal Mine Canyon I almost missed the turnoff entirely. There is no sign that announces it, no visitor center, no parking lot worth the name. Just a dirt track off the highway between Tuba City and Hotevilla, and then suddenly the ground falls away and you are standing at the edge of something that should be more famous than it is. It is not, and I have come to understand that as part of the place rather than a flaw in it. The canyon reads in pastels. Soft pinks, chalk whites, the gray of old ash, a band of black coal running through the middle like a seam of ink. Hoodoos rise from the floor in small congregations. The light at golden hour does what desert light does everywhere in northern Arizona, which is to say it turns ordinary stone into something that looks lit from inside, but here the muted palette takes the warmth differently than the red rock country to the south. It glows rather than burns. Spring and fall are the seasons. Summer is too harsh for what this place is trying to show you. I want to be careful about how I write this. The canyon sits on Navajo and Hopi land, and a backcountry permit may be required depending on where exactly you go and when. Treat it as the sacred ground it is. Stay back from the rim, which has no guardrails and will not forgive a misstep. Photograph from a distance that respects both your life and the place. What you take home will not look like Bryce. It will look quieter. That is the whole point.

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