Creative Nonfiction Features

Deep in the Grand Canyon, shadows rose up and descended like dark curtains against the stone. Early morning brought a lip of light to the rim which found its way down to the river by mid-morning. Late afternoon dropped the shadows, slow and steady, until the mouth of the canyon closed to the sun and we lived again in the dark.

Faint footsteps circled the tent. We were camped near Bonar Bridge in Scotland. Sticks snapped in the midst of a crooning whistle. Everything we owned leaned on a tree nearby. 

For weeks we had been joking that night didn’t exist this far north, that the light lingered through the edges of each day, disrupted only by our sleep. . .

We enter the parking lot at a time when I would normally be considering bed. The summer sun is just setting behind the Oquirrh Mountains, taking color with it. Nearby, aspen flutter in the falling light.

“Do you think it’ll be too windy to see the owls?” I ask Michael. Trees bend on the mountains before me, and I’m thinking about how the winds on the Salt Creek Marsh near Logan keep the burrowing owls in their holes. But Michael is confident it won’t be a problem.