Tahquitz Canyon

Author's Comments

The canyon narrows quickly, and that is the thing I remember most about my first walk in. The desert above is all glare and openness, and then within a half mile you are between walls of red and grey stone with a creek running at your feet. The shift is almost theatrical. Tahquitz holds water that the surrounding landscape does not, and the vegetation reflects that small miracle - palms, willows, the green that only happens where there is something underground keeping things alive. I come in February or early March, after the winter rains have done their work. The waterfall at the end of the loop runs sixty feet down a dark seam in the rock, and in the right light, late morning when the sun has finally cleared the canyon rim, the spray catches and the basin below goes from shadow to something silver. A long exposure works here if you can find a stable place to set up. The walls are close enough that a wide lens does most of the work without much effort from you. What I find harder to photograph, and more interesting to sit with, is the cultural weight of the place. The Cahuilla have lived in this canyon for generations, and the irrigation channels and rock art are not artifacts but continuities. I try to photograph less when I am thinking about that. The canyon asks for a quieter kind of attention than the waterfall alone suggests, and I have learned to give it the time it deserves before raising the camera at all.

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