Navigating My Way in Capitol Reef National Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While on the main Scenic Drive in Capitol Reef National Park with a view looking to the northwest from a roadside pullout. My thinking in composing this image was to capture a look across this high desert landscape to the monocline and cliff wall leading off into the distance.

Hiking Southern Utah: Yellow Knolls Trail

Hiking Southern Utah: Yellow Knolls Trail

Hiking Southern Utah: Yellow Knolls Trail Written by Ashley Gilreath Trail name: Yellow Knolls Trail Distance: 4 miles round-trip Elevation Change: 537 ft. Directions: From Interstate 15 Exit 8, turn west on St. George Boulevard. Turn at the first right on 1000 East. Turn right onto Red Hills Parkway. Turn left on Cottonwood Springs Road. It’s about a 6.5 mile drive from where you turn off Red…

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Tower Butte catching the sunset, Page Az

maze

Sandfall by James Marvin Phelps Via Flickr: Sandfall Canyon X Antelope Canyon Page, Arizona March 2024

HARMONY IN STONE

This beautiful sandstone monolith is Tsé Na'ashjééii — Spider Rock — Legendary home to Spider Grandmother. Holy Spider Woman is an important deity in Navajo mythology. It was she who taught the People how to weave. There is purity and strength here. And places Sacred to the people. Places strong in the oneness of earth and sky and of all things. With beauty all around me, I walk….

Photo by Sacred Ecology, Christine Peterson, 2014

Monument Valley by www.arayphoto.com https://flic.kr/p/PpZDzH

Petroglyphs on Navajo Sandstone in Capitol Reef National Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While at the Capitol Reef Petroglyph area and a view looking to the north at some chiseled rock art present along this sandstone cliff wall.

Spider Rock, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, USA.

📷 PetevPaul Photography

The canyon's best-known feature is Spider Rock, a sandstone spire that rises more than 700 feet from the floor of the canyon. It's named for Spider Woman, a key figure in Navajo lore. Spider Rock, Pranger says, is the last remnant of stream and hillslope erosion process that continue to make the canyons deeper and wider.

Source: Beautiful Planet

Monument Valley, AZ (No. 25)

Perhaps nothing better symbolizes the American Southwest than Monument Valley and its iconic scenery, along with its extraordinary collection of buttes. These buttes are located in the present-day Navajo Nation (the largest American Indian reservation). The two most iconic buttes are perhaps East Butte and West Butte. They are free to visit and have long captured the public imagination. They have become ingrained in America's mythic "Wild West" and shape the perception of the Southwest.

The buttes of Monument Valley tower around 1,000 feet above the desert floor below. According to Navajo legend, they are the carcasses of long-defeated monsters. The buttes are made of red sandstone and are isolated hills with steep sides and a flat top. The buttes have been exposed over the eons as the valley has been eroded.

The rocks of the valley are mostly sedimentary, dating from between the Permian to the mid-Jurassic. In total, they represent around 192 million years of Earth's geologic history. There are three main formations making up the monuments - the Organ Rock Formation (formed from the sediments), the De Chelly Formation (formed from ancient dunes of deserts), and the Moenkopi Formation.

The oldest of the formations show that this area was once submerged as a marine environment. Ancient seas came and went throughout the geologic history of Monument Valley. Additionally, there are some locations with Igneous rocks cropping out. These are the plugs of ancient volcanoes.

Source

This bizarre sandstone structure is known as the 'Alien Throne'. It stands in the Valley of Dreams, on Navajo Nation land in the northwestern New Mexico badlands. The 'Alien Throne' is found just outside the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness Study Area, which is home to multicolored badlands, sandstone hoodoos, petrified wood and dinosaur bones.

This towering structure is a hoodoo, which is a tall, thin spire of rock that sticks out from the bottom of a badland. Usually hoodoos are formed within sedimentary rock and volcanic rock formations.

Minerals deposited within different rock types cause hoodoos to have different colors throughout their height.

Wanted

Y/N, a bounty hunter in the old west, finally captures her mark she’s been chasing for ten long years.

Bam Margera X Fem!Reader

(Cowboy!au, Fluff, Angst)

3.1k Words

Warnings: Highly suggestive content, guns, enemies to lovers, stalking, injury description, alcohol, bondage, gun play

An: Thank you so much for your requests!! This fic was inspired by this message I received from my AMAZING friend @camariesintrusivethoughts!! They are so sweet, so please go give them some love!! I was so happy that they enjoyed my cowboy!au so much, and if anyone would be interested I would love to continue this series further! :D This is a sort of loose sequel to my first cowboy fic if you wanna understand it’s place in the serries lol anyways thank you so much for all your requests and messages and please keep sending them!!

TCK- POW! The ear splitting gunshot cracked loud through the dusty, Navajo sandstone canyons, and you knew this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Just your luck, to find yourself in town when a major crime was committed- made things real easy. Your ears perked up like a trained hunting dog at the telltale sound that echoed outside the saloon you were passing the time in, and quicker than you could think, you abandoned the drink you were nursing and dashed outside. Danger was pay dirt, and every foul deed thwarted was another dollar rolling in from the sheriff to line your pockets, those dollars becoming more and more vital given the dry spell you were going through. It seemed that, for the past two months, not one soul in the west felt the urge to do wrong. As you hurriedly approached the scene, you gathered that it was a bank robbery- a garden variety crime you debated whether or not was worth your time. Cautiously resting your gloved hand over where your .44 sat in its holster at your belt, another shot went off, turning a window into little shards that glittered gold in the late evening sunset as they shattered outward. Screams from frightened patrons flooded out the open window, accompanying a sound that made your fingers white knuckle against the grip of your piece and your blood run cold.

It was an all too familiar noise- the kind of cackle that you would expect to hear out of an animal, primal and triumphant in whatever cruelty it was inflicting. Steadying your breath, you convinced yourself that this was your mind playing tricks on you- that it couldn’t actually be him, but your suspicions were all confirmed when the very man you were dismissing kicked open the door of the bank, overfilled burlap sacks of cash tucked under each arm spilling onto the ground, followed by his posse who had equal or larger hauls than him. Instantly, you recognized him for who he was- the infamous bandit king of the west and his gang of followers, who were equally nefarious in their own right. Even the town sheriff was intimidated by these men as they ran off to their horses, laughing and cheering with their spoils. In all of the desert you called home, you were maybe the only person who was disappointed in the crime rate- well, you and the handful of other poor saps who patrolled the sand looking for criminals. The bounty on the head of the bandit king was pushing seven digits, enough to retire on and then some, and he had his back turned to you.

Frozen in place, the desperate yell that sprung out of your throat from where it was coiled up in your stomach was the only coherent action you could muster. “Brandon!” You didn’t call him Bam, which was the name most people, including his closest comrades addressed him as. Slowing down before he stilled on his feet, the bandit king’s head turned slightly toward you at the uttering of a name only his mother ever used to call for him and he looked at you with this glimmer in his eyes- those damn blue eyes that were burned into your vision by one too many whiskey fueled, angst saturated nights spent staring at his wanted poster. Meeting your gaze, he flashed you a crooked smile, just enough for you to get a look at a too sharp canine that made him look more like a rattlesnake than a man. Oh, but just as fast, he kicked up with one foot as if he were a desert hare and landed square on the back of his bay mustang, joining his men as they rode away with their riches to leave you standing there, speechless, furrious, and alone in a cloud of dust. At that moment, you decided it was time to leave town once again.

This woman was making it way too easy for him, Bam thought, grinning to himself as he rode off. Y/N was in love with him- she had to be, because he hadn’t met a lady who didn’t fall for his charms yet, and despite her little vendetta against him, he was currently very much alive and in one piece. It was as if, no matter what obnoxious crimes he pulled, she would always let him get away. However, his little ego trip was put to a halt as he grimaced, pain shooting through his shoulder and into his chest, a product of the bullet which still sat wedged inside his muscle: a souvenir of his last run in with the law, albeit a painful one. The kind of thing that reminds you that you're really alive. “Where d’ya suppose we head to next?” Bam’s closest confidant, Ryan, broke the silence after an hour or so of aimlessly riding away from the scene. Squinting into the now setting sun, the bandit king thought back to every burnt out town he stowed away in over the years, and there was a clear, authoritative tone in his voice as he reached in his pocket to shove a cigarette between his teeth, “I gotta place.”

Maybe you were getting a little obsessed, but who in their right mind wouldn’t be in this situation? Picture this, you had the chance to bag the most notorious criminal in the west, the guy you spent the better part of a decade following, and you fumble it. That fucker didn’t even need the money after so many years spent robbing banks and hustling- he had no reason to be tormenting the land the way he did. There was no way you would let a mark of this caliber slip through your fingers, especially after his recent crime spree following his big jailbreak outta some town in New Mexico. No law enforcement had made their bid for the bandit king’s hide yet, incompetent bastards, even after his crimes started growing grander and grander. He was doing it for the attention, and judging from how the newspapers printed bold headlines about his exploits and town preachers across the west gave colorful sermons about how there’s a special place in hell for criminal scum like him, he was surely receiving it. In fact, in an odd parallel of sorts, this whole ordeal of you going after him also started the same way any of your previous marks had- for the money, but after you began tracking him, this developed into something more. Never once had this man laid a finger on you nor your kin, but still you felt that he had wronged you, in some way- that vengeance must be delivered to right his crime of occupying your mind and time to such a degree.

He made his most recent appearance, after his big prison break outta some little village in New Mexico three weeks prior, in some dusty ghost town that frequently served as a hideout for bandits, situated along the beautiful Gila River- that shimmering ribbon that ran all the way up to Colorado Territory. It was a well needed oasis in the sandy hell that is Arizona, you thought, hopping off your saddle as your horse Adilaide stopped for a drink. Kneeling by her side, you held your hat in one hand as you eagerly sipped from the cool, crisp stream before righting yourself and wiping your mouth with your sleeve, savoring it as if it was the last drink you’d ever take, which it very well may be depending on how this went. Resolutely tying your girl to a post on one end of town in case things went south, you took a deep breath as you started off, scanning porches and peering into windows for any sign of that so-called bandit king. There were too many familiar faces in this town for your liking, you decided, meeting eyes with a few of your past marks who didn’t stray from their spots because they knew who you were looking for, and they didn’t take too kindly to flashy career criminals like him. The first place you decided to check was a deserted looking boarded up house across the street- a place you could see a man like him hiding out in. Gripping the handle of your gun protectively, you approached the dilapidated shack cautiously and crept up to a window- the one with a gap in between the boards just wide enough to shove your barrel into, peering with one eye through the gap.

“You lookin’ for someone?” His voice nearly made you jump, a nonchalant rumble from where he stood there, leaning against the wood siding with his revolver held low against the side of his hip and that wolf-like smile on his face as if he was happy to see you. It made you, a skilled bounty hunter worth your salt, fumble with your gun all wide eyed before hurriedly jamming it against his forehead. Bam didn’t even flinch. Stepping forward, he taunted you, standing mere inches away with his barrel digging into the flesh that rested right above your belt as he pressed his forehead against your muzzle teasingly. He was begging you. Bam’s eyes glimmered with confidence, these piercing blue things that sent chills through you as the air between you hummed with tension, all warm and wrapped around you, serpentine. The bandit king’s voice shifted, now no longer the growl of a predator but instead a low, sly purr that slithered into your ears, “C’mon. Do it.” You couldn’t bring yourself to. He knew you’d only get your money if you brought him back with all pieces intact, gray matter included, and as much as you wanted to lob a few of his bits off for the hell of it, you held yourself back. Everything was silent for a moment, save for the sounds of Bam’s breathing, shockingly gentle for a man with a loaded gun to his head. Even so, it was your hands that were shaking as he kept you busy while his gang had surrounded you over the course of your conversation. The metallic click of a hammer being pulled back alerted you to the fact that no matter where you looked, there was a muzzle in your face, leaving you outgunned fivefold. Breath hitched in your throat and there Bam stood, with that fucking smile he got when he knew he had you pinned. Withdrawing his revolver, he spun it around his index finger before shoving his peice back into his black leather holster across his body.

“It’s been fun, Y/N- Really.” The sun silhouetted Bam as he walked away with a flourish while speaking with words that oozed with amusement and something darker. Christ, you had your gun, loaded and at the ready in your hand and you still couldn't do it. Something in you urged you to just throw yourself forward, pin him to the sand with your body and grab a fist of his hair to yank his head back and tie his wrists. To make him pay for all those sleepless nights, those wasted years- to finally capture the prey that was rightfully yours after so many years, and to take in that look in his eyes as his world crumbled in front of him in a matter of seconds. To really see that image that you fantasized about so fervently play out would be enough. But something stopped you again, an emotion that you couldn’t easily identify. He was an outlaw, not loyal to anyone but the men he traveled with, who all shared in his lacking of even an ounce of charisma or intellect and who also only bathed on the occasion they came about a body of water (which was rare), and yet you found yourself, if you could call it this, admiring the audacity of this vermin. Any positive emotions towards your marks were dangerous, you thought, but still you couldn’t assuage the feelings that stirred deep within you as the weight of defeat sat heavy in your chest, adrenaline fading.

In his words, the inn Bam and his gang stopped in was a nice place to visit but a better place to hold up. Unfortunately, they had important things to take care of in the morning and needed a place to sleep for the night, so that plan had to wait. It was deemed far enough away from anywhere their name would be known, so it wouldn’t raise any eyebrows if they showed their faces. Walking up to the counter, the bandit king didn’t bother to count as he unceremoniously dropped a handful of dollar coins to the wooden counter with a clatter, more than enough to cover their bill. Glancing up from his newspaper, the owner of the inn’s eyes went wide, first at the fact he could buy a couple acres of farmland with the money on his counter, and second for the fact that Bam was currently reaching for the shiny piece of metal that sat on his belt in case the money he gave him wouldn’t be enough to cover it. His gang all stood around, grinning like wolves as the innkeeper handed them their keys with shaking fingers, before heading off to the tavern that sat on the lower level for a few drinks. It was the kind of sleazy, low brow place that these fellows really felt at home in, and they were warmly welcomed by the other nerdowells, especially after the bandit king got a few drinks in him and got to telling these sensationalized tales of thrilling adventures and conquest to distract as he and his men colluded to swindle the pot of the poker game they were sitting arround. But as the night wore on, Bam was growing increasingly more tired and decided to retire to his room ahead of his crew.

You got word that those bandits were on their way to California- something about a train they were planning to rob. Exhaustion clawed at the corners of your eyes as you tried your damndest to ride on after them through the night, but it was nearing midnight and judging from the way Adliaide was dragging her hooves, you weren't the only one who needed some shut-eye. Stopping for the night, you settled down at this little inn that looked like the kind of place bad things happen. Your suspicions were confirmed as you scanned the crowd when you stopped in at the bar downstairs for one last drink before you hit the sack. But as you were still on the clock, you felt obligated to ask around a little, which is why you stopped the barmaid after she handed you your whiskey, “Hey, have you, uh- have you gotten any word about some bandits comin’ through these parts?” She shrugged, pretending to be busy with something behind the counter- that is, until you dropped a quarter dollar onto it. “Well, I might know about ‘em.” You dropped a few more.

You left Maisie at the bar a sizable tip that night for dropping the room number of the elusive bandit king, and you could barely contain your emotions as you rushed up the stairs after him. Popping open with little resistance, the lock on the door of room seven was broken with one swift kick next to the handle, and there you stood in the doorway, chest heaving with breath as if you were a hunter about to capture his long tracked game. Startled by the loud bang, Bam went to sit up before he winced, a shallow gasp escaping him at that lightning bolt pain shooting up his wounded arm again. That delayed him enough that he didn’t have a chance to reach his gun that was resting on the bedside table before you threw yourself onto him, pinning his body down to the sheets. Your heart was beating out of your chest as your grip shook with anticipation around his wrists when you grabbed them, shoving his hands through the bars of the metal bed frame and tying them with the rope you kept on your belt. Bam didn’t even struggle as he stared up at you with a barely perceptible smile crossing his lips at the way you were straddling his hips, watching you. Reaching for your holster, you roughly jammed the muzzle against the bandit king’s royal temple, pinning his head to the pillow as you leaned down to growl into his ear through gritted teeth. “Ten years- ten long years, and I’ve finally gotcha’.” Bam looked up at you with half lidded eyes as you slowly ran the cold, hard, eager steel of your gun down his face, caressing down his cheekbone to his neck. Still, with a gun to his head, he found a way to be defiant, “Took’y long enough…” Jabbing your barrel against the bottom of your chin to put him back in his place, you could see his Adam’s apple bob as you murmured bitterly, “Time ain’t got nothin’ t’do with it. I dunno if you can tell, but I got’cha tied.” Inch by inch, your barrel trailed down Bam’s bare torso as he breathed in the adrenaline soaked air, his chest rising and falling shallowly under you. Wasn't that a sight.

Stopping right above his belt buckle which glinted in the light of the gas lamp that lit the room, you got up from where you were now sitting back on your haunches, and all the words and feelings that were festering inside of you poured out, “I’ve followed you t’hell ‘n back, and finally-“ You started monologuing, standing up as you continued your brooding rant, “I’m puttin’ an end to this little cat ‘n mouse game.” Just as you turned your back for a moment, you heard this clamoring, and when you whipped your head around, the only thing you saw was the window Bam leapt out of shattering out, flock of pigeons style into the night. While you weren't looking, he had wriggled out of the ropes you didn’t tie tight enough magical style to make his grand escape. Leaning out the window with wide eyes, you watched as he rolled down the slanted tin roof of the stables to land on his feet. Bam stood up from where he was kneeling, brushing the dust off of his trousers as he looked up to the illuminated window you were leaning out of to tip his hat towards you before the bandit king hopped on the back of his horse, riding off into the night.

Canyon X by James Marvin Phelps Via Flickr: Canyon X Antelope Canyon Page, Arizona March 2024