Rummaging around Google searches I discovered a ton of “false kiva” images, deservedly so. It’s a fascinating place steeped in history and mystery. Strangely, the available images of the site all use the same general POV.  Nice enough, but repetitious.  Enter the landscape photographer’s mantra: “Enjoy the beautiful scene before you but remember to look behind you”. In support of the mantra here’s a new perspective on a heavily photographed place,  a rendition of the kiva I’ve not see elsewhere.

If the space between the rocks at the bottom of the frame is, in fact, an entrance, as it appears, then in this image I am standing on the kiva’s front porch.  It’s a very small porch, so small that the heels of my boots are hanging over the edge of a drop-off so severe that falling backwards would very likely kill me (not the fall so much as the sudden stop after the fall).  Why the kiva’s creators would put a front entrance so near a dangerous precipice is a mystery. Maybe it wasn’t an entrance. Maybe it was a drain to let the rain out, something utilitarian. Perhaps it was something mystical or religious, the opening points in the general direction of another Canyonlands landmark:  Candlestick Tower.  Or, maybe it was something far more sinister. The imagination runs wild.

PP