Jude Tulloch Artist: a visual storyteller, a traveller and nature lover

Ear of the wind

When the wind blows in Monument Valley, the fine sand whirls, stinging your eyes, coating the inside of your ears and mouth. Tourists with gritty teeth who are sight seeing in open vehicles with no protection from the wind resort to tying bandannas to cover their mouths. They look like “baddies” in an old John Wayne western, an unintended reference to this area’s Hollywood past.

For photographers the wind has an up-side. The clouds glide across the sky casting an ever changing pattern of light over the landscape.

A day trip with a Navajo guide that combines the outer areas of Monument Valley and Mystery Valley where water carves portals to the sky in hollowed rock formations, is well worth doing. Book online in advance for a cheaper rate.

If you stay for more than a day you will begin to sense the forces of nature more keenly. This is a place of harsh beauty.

Last photo: Amory from Three Sister tours