Tumamoc Hill

Author's Comments

The hill is busy. There is no point pretending otherwise. By five in the afternoon in November the road is a slow-moving column of Tucsonans walking off their day, and the summit at sunset has the low murmur of a place that has been claimed by the people who live near it. I have made my peace with this. Tumamoc is not a solitary photograph, and trying to make it one is the wrong instinct. What it is, instead, is a vantage point. Seven hundred feet above the basin, the city laid out east toward the Catalinas, and in winter the light at the last half hour does something specific to Tucson that I have not quite seen elsewhere. The Catalinas catch alpenglow while the basin below is already cooling into blue. The contrast is the photograph. A wide lens, a long exposure as the city lights begin to come up, and the moment when the mountains are still pink and the streetlights have just started to flicker on - that window is maybe ten minutes long. Go up earlier than you think you need to. The walk is paved and steady and takes most people forty-five minutes, but the good compositions are not all at the summit. There is a bend about two-thirds of the way up where the city opens to the east in a way that feels less crowded and more considered. I have made better photographs from there than from the top. Winter is the season. The air is cleaner, the sun sets south enough to put the Catalinas in good light, and the crowds, while still present, are bearable.

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