You wake up at 2:30 in the morning and you’re not sure why. You planned on getting up early but this wasn’t what you had in mind. So you lay in bed for about half an hour, trying to figure out if you want to go back to sleep or just get up. You don’t really make a decision, so you pull out the book you’ve been reading, reasoning that you’ll either pass out reading or stay up and enjoy your book. Eventually, your alarm for 4:30 goes off and you finally drag yourself out of bed, noticing how damn cold it is. You make breakfast and coffee, that sweet black nectar. You’re ready at 5:15, which is perfect since you need to be at the cliff at 6:45 and it’ll take an hour and fifteen minutes to get there – which, incidentally, is the least amount of time it takes you to get anywhere. You step out into the dark, cold morning and instinctively look up into the sky, easily locating Orion and Sirius. The constellations are so much larger than you’re used to, and you gaze at both dippers as you walk to your car. Within minutes you’re heading north-east into the desert, just you and the stars. You hit 70 miles-per-hour without thinking, and you don’t even notice until you’re flying past one of the tiny housing developments that dot the area. But they’re all gone quickly, and once again you’re alone with the sky. It doesn’t stay that way for long. Fifteen minutes into the desert and you can see the faintest glimmers of pale light start to peek past the mountains to the east. You have an hour left to drive, but you’re not worried. You can still see Orion to the west, as if he was trying to guard the night sky against the coming sun. It’s a battle you know he’ll lose, but you smile thinking maybe he’ll buy you some time. The road in front of you is either straight as an arrow or a twisty mountain pass, and it’s impossible to remember which part you’ll hit next. The pale purple to the east keeps disappearing as you pass each mountain, which you’ve taken to collectively calling “the Green Dwarves”. The road markers on your right glow a faint white as you rumble past them, but the brightest thing in this desert by far is your headlights. Rabbits seem to love running across the road in front of you, and you’re pleasantly surprised that they always make it across before you get too close. Finally, after coming out of a stretch of twisted mountain paths, you reach the fork in the road. It’s 6am. To the left, north, is another long stretch of desert. You go right, south, into the canyon. It’s another twisty length of road, but with cottonwoods, junipers, and several hundred foot tall cliff walls staring at you as you go 70 right at them before the road swoops out of the way. After fifteen minutes, you’ve made it. The cliff looking out over a huge stretch of southern Utah. You can’t see if yet, but you know there’s a stretch of the Colorado River somewhere down there. The sun has been rising for nearly an hour, so you can see the outlines of buttes and plateaus forming in the distance, miles away. You’ve got another twenty minutes before anything happens, but you don’t mind. You brought a camp chair and a thermos of coffee. You’re set.
It happens slowly at first. You don’t really notice it for the first few minutes. You’re more concerned with the horse fly that keeps trying to get into your coffee. Finally, it’s so obvious that you can’t help but see it. The world around you is getting brighter. It’s still grey, but it’s gone from black to a light grey, with hints of color thrown onto almost every surface you can see. The clouds, though, those clouds are the real treat. Stretched across what you’re convinced is the entire state is a blanket of soft, black clouds rushing along the sky. Those clouds are what give it away. At first they go from black to grey with the rest of the world, but soon you can see hints of yellow underneath them. They seem to glow at first, giving off their own light, but soon the sun is beginning to peek over the horizon and those clouds aren’t just glowing, they’re burning. The underside of them is orange while the tops are still grey, making them look like giant floating fires. The crowning sun is washing the entire scene with a soft yellow light, except for those burning orange clouds. The Colorado River looks like it’s on fire and the rocky plains below look like they’re made of gold. It looks like a giant water color painting. Except for those clouds that make the sky look like it’s on fire.
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