Rock Formation Near Arches

Outside the headline arches, the Moab country is full of smaller, stranger formations — capped knobs and hoodoos where a hard layer of rock protects the softer stone beneath it from eroding away. This one tilts up to a beaked overhang, like the prow of something or the head of an animal.

Photographed June 2003. Junipers and desert scrub crowd its base, with a bleached dead branch in the sand. Softer and more pastoral than the bare formations — the desert here is still half-garden.