The Southwest

There are palatial halls and dizzying chasms in Arizona and Utah -- chiseled and sanded into the landscape by water and wind over millennia. 

To address the obvious -- you'll see I only have a few photos from the Grand Canyon. Simple answer: I was completely dissatisfied with every other shot I took there. A lack of clouds, an excess of overhead light, and being land-bound meant I had zero chance of capturing the gargantuan scale of this craggy hole in the ground. None of the images really conveyed the feeling I wanted. Same reasoning goes for why I only have a few from Angel's Landing. 

That aside, this trip was an incredible whirlwind of purple stone, blazing sunsets, and vertiginous heights. But we didn't even scratch the surface of what the Southwest had to offer, either by way of parks or by history. In particular, you cannot separate the landscape from its history of human civilization -- ranging from the Ancestral Puebloans (200-1500 CE), to their Puebloan descendants (including Zuni and Hopi tribes), to the arrival of the Apache and Navajo (1200 CE), to the arrival of white colonists, and continued persecution by the US government. 

And then there is the folklore. As these tales are passed down through generations, they give us insight into what people valued, how they lived, and what supernatural forces they honored or reviled. As children, many of us learned about famous spirits like Coyote, but there is so much more to explore. If you're looking for a place to start, I highly recommend Diné bahane' by Paul Zolbrod, a retelling of the Navajo creation story. A preview is available on Google Books here.

If you have additional recommendations for reputable sources of stories, please let me know!