Mingus Mountain Overlook

Author's Comments

The drive up from Jerome on 89A is its own slow education. You climb out of the old copper town and into ponderosa, and the air changes, and by the time you reach the pullouts near the summit you are looking back at a piece of Arizona that does not quite seem like it should fit in a single frame. The Verde Valley spreads below. Sedona's red rocks sit in the middle distance, smaller than you expect. The San Francisco Peaks rise behind them, and on a clear afternoon in late September you can trace the line of the Mogollon Rim running off to the east like a long held breath. I prefer the pullouts a little past the summit on the Prescott side, where the pines frame the view rather than crowd it. Golden hour is the obvious answer and it is the right one - the valley fills with warm side light and the red rocks do what red rocks do when the sun is low. But the photograph I keep chasing here is the one just after, in that twenty minutes when the peaks behind Sedona go violet and the foreground pines hold onto the last warm light. The depth is enormous. A wide lens will capture the sweep, but a longer focal length compresses the layers in a way that feels closer to how the place actually registers. The Woodchute trailhead is worth the small detour if you want fewer branches in your frame. Crowds are almost never the problem. The light is the problem, and the only solution is to be there when it happens.

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