A preview with more photos to come for this part of the journey.

A preview with more photos to come for this part of the journey.

A preview with more photos to come for this part of the journey.

A preview with more photos to come for this part of the journey.

A preview with more photos to come for this part of the journey.

The Grand Canyon was and still is a sacred place for many Native Americans.

After the Grand Canyon, my photographs and experience of Earth with Man begins a new path. It is no longer seeing man's influence on the earth but how the earth begins to influence me, begins to speak to me. I discover that the earth was always speaking to me. I recognize that the camera, like many of man's tools, is at times a barrier to seeing the earth. I have had to understand that the earth speaks quietly, gently, peacefully. What it is saying cannot always be captured on film or recorded.

I came looking for Earth with Man and have found myself in the earth, the earth in me, me in the midst of the earth's history and the earth's history as a personal experience.

The landscape reflects me and I begin to reflect the landscape.
My experience begins to be a spiritual journey.

It is no longer documenting and stating facts - it is observing without taking, listening without speaking. I reduce my amount of photography and recording.
I watch more. I write with pencil and paper.

Hoover Dam holds back the Colorado River to form Lake Mead, a reservoir with a surface area of 640 square kilometers. The Hoover Dam was constructed between 1931 and 1936 in the Black Canyon and was at that time the largest concrete structure ever built. The water is distributed as far as Los Angeles, nearly 500 kilometers distant.

80 kilometers from Las Vegas and near Lake Mead, Valley of Fire is named after its red sandstone formations that formed from ancient sand dunes that spread across this area of North America 150 million years ago. The Anazasi, ancestral Puebloans, were in this area from 300 BC to 1150 AD. They left behind hundreds petroglyphs.

Miners intimidated by the harsh environment gave Death Valley its current name, but the Native American Timbisha Shoshone who occupied the area for over 1000 years called it "tumpisa," meaning "red rock face paint," which refers to the sacred red ochre paint they made from clay found in the valley. Death Valley actually has numerous springs, oases and recently, the Devil's Hole spring, which surfaces in Death Valley, was traced to a large underground aquafier that takes 15,000 years to flow from the Nevada Test Site 50 miles away to where it surfaces at Ash Meadows in Death Valley. The Nevada Test Site was the center of nuclear bomb testing for over four decades. The now radioactive water at the Nevada Test Site will one day reach Ash Meadows. The creation of the Death Valley National Monument in 1933 was the result of lobbying by the Automobile Club of Southern California.

Surrounded by vast rocket and missle complexes of the US military, the white sand dunes are created by gypsum dust that has flowed with rain water down into the basin from the surrounding mountains. The gypsum was first layed down 280 to 250 million years ago when gypsum and other minerals were left behind in layers on the shallow Permian Sea that covered the southwestern portion of the US. 70 million years ago, tectonic plates began to shift and collide, pushing up land and forming many of our modern-day mountain ranges, including the mountains surrounding White Sands. At this time, the gypsum-rich seabeds from the Permian period were raised into the mountains. 30 million years ago, the earth's crust began to pull apart in this area, forming basin and ranges, including the Tularosa Basin where the white sand dunes are found. 24,000 to 12,000 years ago, rain and snowmelt brought the gypsum down from the mountains into a 1,600-square mile lake called Lake Otero. At the end of the last ice age, Lake Otero evaporated, leaving behind a crystalline form of gypsum, Selenite. Through a period of erosion through water and wind, these crystals were turned to grains of sand, which were picked up by the winds and pushed northeast, forming the white sand dunes.

Where the border between Texas and New Mexico lies today, a great reef formed in an inland sea during the Permian period (250 to 290 million years ago). As the inland sea dried over hundreds of thousands of years, this reef was completely buried beneath minerals percipitaing out of the evaporating waters. 20 - 30 million years ago, new tectnonic activity caused portions of the reef to rise above the earth over 1000 meters. The uplifted rock was exposed to wind and rain, causing the softer sedimentary rock to erode away, uncovering the fossil reef that forms today's Guadalupe Moutains.

Also a part of the great Capitan Reef that formed 290 million years ago, and which today makes up the Guadalupe Mountains, the Carlsbad Caverns are some of the largest and longest caves in the world, but they were formed differently than other caverns. Unlike most caverns in the world today, which are often made by carbonic acid in surface water flowing through cracks in limestone, the Carlsbad Caverns were formed when hydrogen sulfide from oil deposits in the area mixed with microbes and oxygen in the underground water table, creating sulfuric acid. This highly acidic mixture quickly carved out passageways along cracks, fractures and faults in the limestone. As the Guadalupe Mountains rose, the level of the water table dropped in relation to the land surface, and with it, the aggressive, acidic water, leaving a newly dissolved cave behind.

Ansel Adams attempted to photograph these caves, but he found his efforts unsatisfactory and futile due to the lack of natural light. The caverns had been known for thousands of years by Native Americans but is not known to be entered by them beyond the main, natural entry and the somewhat deeper bat cave. In the early 1900s, American ranchers in the region began exploring further into the caverns, even breaking through blocking rocks. Soon, it began to be apparent that the caverns would become a major tourist attraction. In 1925, stairs were installed at the entrance. In 1931, an elevator shaft was drilled and blasted 300 meters into the caverns. By the end of 1937, over 1 million people visited the caverns. Today, that number has reached over 37 million. Now, a concession stand, souvenir shop and bathrooms are located in the middle of the caverns.

A town of 1,800 people, Marfa, Texas is like many train depots dotting the Southern-Pacific Railroad that bands the southern and southwestern United States. Marfa grew as a railroad watering stop in the 1880's and then again as a training facility for pilots during World War II. Recently, contemporary artist, Donald Judd, from New York City kept his summer home here. Since then, two populations have arisen: that of the long-time local residents and that of the transient, affluent New York art scene. Donald Judd had his studio in a walled-in compound, easily symbolizing the great division between the local town and the art world. With somewhat shrewd business instinct, and likely anticipating migrating artists and galleries from New York City, Judd bought a great deal of local property and land, leaving it as a legacy for his children to manage, and to profit from. To visit Donald Judd's studio, his non-profit organzation charges $25 a person (and no admittance to children under 12), whereas to visit the local Presidio County Museum, housed in the home donated to the city by local resident, Don Juan Humphries, is free for all visitors. A native resident said she had never visited Judd's compound and that as long as she could remember, "the new one's" often walled in their homes and lived separately. She, on the other hand, rarely locked her door. Another resident said that there were no special programs between the "art foundations" and the local schools and rising property prices are making it difficult for long-time residents to afford to live here.

The central mass of Big Bend, the Chisos Mountains, were formed by volcanoes and upwelling magma between 38 and 32 million years ago. 135 million years ago, a warm, shallow sea covered Big Bend where the limestone layers of the Santa Elena Canyon walls were made from the remains of sea life. Today, the Santa Elena Canyon and these towering walls separate Mexico and the United States at the "Big Bend" formed by the Rio Grande.

The speed of commercial development in Houston is only matched by the swift forces of nature, demonstrated in the dramatic flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The oil and petrochemical complexes around the Houston Ship Channel are the largest in the world. The Menil Museum houses the largest collection of Surrealist works in the world. The Menil family opens their private collection for free to the public. They also house the meditative masterpieces of Mark Rothko in the Rothko Chapel, an unobstrusive and silent brick hexagon amongst bamboo bushes facing the Broken Obelisk of Barnett Newman.

From above the Earth, man's struggle to exist amongst the challenges of nature show clearly in the etchings of his roads and settlements in the snowy landscapes of Iceland and Greenland. Man's life borders on the seemingly endless, white fields of ice.