Saguaro National Park East - Cactus Forest Drive

Author's Comments

Eight miles is not very far, but I have spent entire afternoons on this loop and barely made it halfway around. The saguaros do that to you. They are not arranged the way you would arrange them. They lean, they cluster, they stand alone on a slope with nothing else for fifty feet, and the longer you look the more the forest reveals its quiet logic. Late November is when I love this drive most. The summer monsoons are long past, the air has gone clear and thin, and the Rincons hold their snow lightly on the upper ridges. Forty-five minutes before sunset the light starts to turn, and the saguaros go from green to something warmer, almost bronze along their western ribs. The shadows lengthen east across the bajada. The mountains behind them deepen into blue. I tend to work from the pullouts on the back half of the loop, where the road climbs slightly and the forest opens up below you. A long lens compresses the saguaros against the Rincons in a way that the eye does not quite see on its own, and that compression is the photograph. But the wide shot from low ground, with one tall saguaro in the near frame and the forest receding behind, is the one I keep trying to get right. The light goes fast at the end. You will think you have ten more minutes and you will have four. Pick your composition early. Let the rest of the drive be slow.

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