Dust, Ghosts & Godlight: A roll of film Through Utah & Arizona

DestinationsTravel

Apr 11

There’s a particular kind of silence you can only find in the desert. That crackling, electric quiet where you can almost hear the land thinking. The first couple days, the silence is roaring in your ears, but then you embrace it and it becomes your baseline. I threw a quick bag together, took a one-shot flight to Salt Lake City from Amsterdam, and landed with a single roll of film, an old Nikon, and half a plan: drive into the red belly of the Southwest and see if Eunoia Chapter’s next retreat could be born from dust and stone.

After two visits now, I think Arches aren’t just stone; they’re portals. They frame the sky in a way that makes you feel like you’ve slipped out of time altogether into a blip. I shot them in the bruised light before dawn. Colors so rich they barely seem real even on film. I can see the retreat happening with tents at Under Canvas Moab. This is not a place for soft mornings. This is a place for becoming.

Explore the natural stone arches of Utah's Arches National Park. Epic hikes, stunning sunrises, and iconic desert landscapes await.

Canyonlands. Endless. Brutal. Holy. Standing on the rim of the canyons felt like eavesdropping on a million-year-old conversation. The film couldn’t even catch the full depth of it. I thought: here, we could do something different. Not just retreat, but pilgrimage. A reminder that smallness and stillness is sacred.

And then Monument Valley happened. There are no words for Monument Valley. Only shapes: totems of stone that feel older than thought. I really didn’t bother framing the shots perfectly. I just let the film eat the light and the camera do its job. Some things don’t need to be controlled or composed right. Some things are bigger than your best intentions and creations. I cried at the beauty.

Lake Powell appeared out of nowhere. I was shattered from the drive and couldn’t take in the sheer magnitude of what I was witnessing. I needed to rest my bones and not drive. I woke up the next morning to a blue mirror in the distance that should’ve been bone dry. I ran down and took it in, finally. A swim. A couple shots. Then I was out like a flash.

Swim, boat, and explore the red rock waters of Lake Powell. A desert oasis perfect for water adventures and stunning canyon views.

In Kanab, I napped in the Wrangler with the windows cracked open. Somewhere between dreams and dehydration, I found myself sketching outlines for a retreat: fires at night, silent hikes at dawn, ceremonies with the red earth pressed to our palms. I drove on from the cowboy ghosts to Zion territory.

Zion doesn’t politely ask you to be present; it demands it. The cliffs scrape something inside you raw and real. I hiked until my legs forgot themselves. I honestly don’t remember taking one single photos I was overwhelmed by the drama of it all. This, I thought, is where we end, or maybe where we begin. I really don’t know. A place to strip it all back: ego, ambition, doubt. A place to meet yourself at the very bottom, and say hola.

These pictures — scratched, grainy, stubbornly analog — they aren’t just documentation. They’re invitations to remember what’s essential. To step out of the damn algorithm and back into your senses. To leave behind the neatness of the digital world and crawl, dusty and blinking, back into something older, truer. Eunoia's retreat is coming here in due time, and it’s going to be wild.