"Against the black night, the darker-than-night silhouettes of Monument Valley buttes graced the horizon. Overhead, stars were scattered across the sky—a prank by Coyote, according to Navajo legend—and the stripe of Milky Way stars arced brilliantly across the sky from the southwest to the northeast horizon.
It was a cold night in northeastern Arizona on the Colorado Plateau, and our group of photographers huddled deeper in our jackets with cameras ready. I kept checking the time on my phone. We knew we were in the right spot; it was just a matter of watching the Milky Way and waiting for the Galactic Center — the center of our galaxy — to flare above the horizon.
Ten minutes. Five minutes. Then it was the predicted moment, and nothing seemed to change. It’s a moment to consider what ancestral people on this very spot would have thought seeing the blaze of golds, reds, blues and all the colors of the stars of our galaxy that come into view. The suspense kept building.
Across the valley came the occasional call of a night bird in flight, mingling with the low murmur of conversations among the photographers and the periodic click of shutters as cameras were tested and adjusted. As if we needed a reminder that we were in the wilds of red rock country, far off to the west a pack of coyotes howled."
Eric Jay Toll reports for the National Parks Traveler May 25, 2025.
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