Coyote Buttes, on the Arizona/Utah border, is a landscape that defies description. Freud would have trouble developing a diagnosis for this patient.

One look at it will put a smile on your face along with a frown. It’s situated at The Vermillion Cliffs National Monument and is well protected. At North Coyote Buttes, a trip to The Wave is only accessible for 20 daily fortunates who were victorious in the dreaded lottery put on by The Bureau of Land Management.

It’s a riot of abstractness, details, hues, textures, patterns and dizzying sandstone  shapes. The Navajo Sandstone calcified dunes evolved into its current look due to erosion from winds and rains.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At South Coyote Buttes, the unusual is the usual at this landscape.  Grotesque shapes of rock cast by millions of years of weathering have produced a carnival of  oddities that Barnum & Bailey would be proud of.   I half expected a woman with a beard to come  walking around the corner.

 

 

It seems as if someone put one of those curvy carnival mirrors out there to give Coyote Buttes it’s distorted look. But it is real. I think.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s highly believable that it took millions of years for the gods to create Coyote Buttes.

You just don’t put this together in a week.

Michael Andrew Just

Dawn2Dawn Photography