Tree Roots Overlooking Wupatki

ASA: 5
Light: 25-50
Exposure: 7 min.
June 17, 2002,  around noon,
near Sunset Crater, AZ

We were on our way to see the Wupatki ruins, when something made us pull over and stop.  I began to walk away from the road.  The ground was a fine, red dust, and here and there were dark, loamy pebbles of volcanic rock.  I walked up to a giant, overturned tree stump, and stood looking through its massive roots into the sky and the land beyond.

Here the mysterious underneath was exposed.  Here was evidence of letting go, of releasing one's energy back into the earth.  Here was something dead that was contributing to the universe through its decay.  This made it appear that the tree was not dead at all, that it never was just a tree, but something else, something greater, something that still lives on, in a different part of its cycle.