Hannagan Meadow

Author's Comments

There are places in Arizona that you do not stumble onto. Hannagan Meadow is one of them. You have to want it, and you have to be willing to drive the Coronado Trail to get there, which is its own kind of commitment - four hundred and sixty curves, give or take, between Clifton and Alpine, and a road that does not let you hurry. By the time the meadow opens up at nine thousand feet, you have earned the quiet. I came up in late August, after a monsoon afternoon had broken and moved east. The grass was still wet. The light was that particular high country gold that only happens at elevation, where the air thins and the color of everything goes a little more saturated than it should be. A small herd of elk worked the far edge of the meadow at dusk, far enough away that they were not really the photograph. The photograph was the meadow itself - the way it sat in a bowl of dark spruce, the way the light moved across it as the sun dropped, the way you could hear absolutely nothing except wind and the occasional bull bugling somewhere in the trees. What I love about Hannagan is its refusal to perform. It is not a famous view. It does not appear on the lists. It is just a meadow at the top of a long road, with a lodge and a trailhead and some elk, and that is the whole point. Come in summer for the wildflowers after a monsoon. Come in fall for the aspens turning along the ridges. Come at golden hour either way. Stay until the light is gone.

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