He did not come seeking answers, nor was he lost. The road had summoned him—as it had summoned others before him—and he followed its arc with the steadiness of one who does not hurry time. The sun was descending behind him, slow and inevitable, casting long golden blades across the plateau. That was how it wanted to be seen, and he did not interfere.
He had come this way before in dreams, further south where the great stone mittens reached into the sky. There, the land had risen in clarity, each formation distinct in its declaration. But now the evening had deepened, and the land changed its tongue. It spoke more slowly. With greater weight. And he listened.
The air was thin with silence. Even the wind moved differently here—more cautious, more reverent. And then the shapes came into view. Not suddenly, but as if they had always been there and were only now permitting themselves to be noticed.
Here stood Brigham’s Tomb.
It rose alone, square and solemn, its flanks pressed by the last warmth of the day. The light traced every fracture, every line of sediment like the spine of something ancient and vast. It had no vanity. Its strength was in endurance, in the simplicity of mass. The world had spun uncounted times around this throne of stone, and still it stood—unmoved, unwitnessed except by sky and the slow-growing desert at its feet.
He paused there—not because he was uncertain, but because the monument required it. Some things must be received in silence.
To the southeast, past a stretch of ochre earth and sagebrush, rose two more forms. The King on His Throne, upright and proud, shaped as if he had emerged from the stone itself to bear witness. An artifact of erosion, also a sovereign presence—crowned in shadow and wind. There was no question of who he was. His seat was eternal, and no rider passed without first meeting his gaze.
Beside him stood The Stagecoach. Its resemblance to the name was almost too perfect, as if the form had stepped from the myth fully formed. But he knew better. It had not become a stagecoach. The coach had become it. The names were backwards, as names often are. The land had come first. All else was echo.
The giants stood together across the basin, their red-gold skin kindled in the last light. Their arrangement was no accident. One rose alone. Two more aside, bound by rhythm but not repetition. Together they formed a sequence—pause, proclamation, passage.
He walked the trail slowly, camera at his side but silent for a long while. There were things beyond framing. This was not a scene to be taken. It was a truth to be approached.
At the edge of the frame—a photograph not yet taken, but inevitable—the fence stretched taut across the scrub. Old wood. Rusted wire. Man’s line scratched against the land’s permanence. It held nothing. It said nothing. But it was there, and so he acknowledged it, as one acknowledges a child’s drawing pinned beside a mural.
Overhead, the sky was deepening into steel. But the earth still burned, even gently. The buttes and mesas were not dimmed by dusk. They only leaned inward, as if the heat of the day had carried them toward some great remembering.
He had seen many monuments in his life, but these were not monuments in the human sense. These were not built. They were born. They had no need for marble or inscription. Their gospel was in their silence, their liturgy the erosion of time itself.
He stood long, unmoving.
Not lost. Not searching. Just witnessing.
As the light slipped and the forms began to release their edges to shadow, he turned once—not away, but forward. The road still called. And the giants behind him did not diminish. They merely remained, as they always had, and always would.
Waiting.
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 