We’ve always been about finding beauty in the slow moments, whether it’s kicking back on the porch or wandering someplace wild. Photographer Colin Rex took that ethos off-road in our latest Creator Series, capturing the stillness, decay, and unexpected poetry of the San Rafael Swell. Take a visual trip through the quiet corners of the Utah desert in his newest photo essay, Wreckage — a meditative look at what’s left when nature takes its time.

— Dad Grass

DARKNESS

By late March, the reef had warmed. Shallow pools of snowmelt lingered in the shaded slots; the flats already baked dry and splitting at the seams. Victor and I drove west into the evening, making a beeline for Crack Canyon as the sky darkened in bands. The truck rattled its way over washboard as we detoured around the airstrip, uninterested in repeating past mistakes. The last bit of color drained from the sky.

In a hurry to leave the truck behind we pocketed the essentials — a couple drinks, some dried fruit, a dead camera battery. The wash was wide and easy at first, narrowing until the walls leaned overhead and the shadows turned bone-white and back again. A bat flickered past and we followed it deeper downstream, footsteps muffled by sand and silt. The Third Man trailed us, keeping a careful distance.

DUALITY

The first real choke came fast. Victor led, stemming across a narrow gap with his palms pressed into the sandstone, shoes scraping for purchase. Dust and sand rained down from the ledges above, pooling at the base of the wall. I followed clumsily and carefully, my camera in my right hand while my left felt for friction behind me. We scrambled up and over piles of fallen rock, weaving through stretches of cracked mud and old driftwood jammed high into crevices, traveling quickly through time as tectonic forces buckled sedimentary layers into the fold.

Points of geological interest abounded as early Mesozoic layers shifted underfoot, starting with the colorful Chinle, followed by the Wingate cliffs, Kayenta ledges, Navajo domes. Ancient seas, river deltas, and shifting dunes — stacked, buckled, and cracked by time and pressure. Tafoni pocked the rock faces like open wounds. The rising full moon painted a pale glow over the landscape as we reached the exit of Crack Canyon, pausing for a breath before rounding the bend west and following Chute back upstream.

Somewhere past midnight, we killed our lamps and let the night take over. The route twisted through shadow and back into sharp beams of moonlight as the canyon inhaled and exhaled slowly. Hours slipped past without notice. The reef blurred into a silver-blue cycle; each turn was fully familiar and entirely new. A couple miles from Hidden Splendor and a quarter million from the moon, we were suspended in the balance — feeling the pull of dark and light, earth and sky; man and nature.

DECAY

Eventually, the canyon loosened its grip. We followed the drainage back toward the truck, stepping over tangles of saltbush and bleached driftwood, the sky growing pale at the edges. Delirious now, I burned through my last few frames until my camera died for good. Soft morning light revealed the wear: split juniper branches, trampled brush, wind-carved channels in the sand. A glint caught my eye — a battered chrome bumper half-buried in the sand, rusted nearly beyond recognition. I nudged it once with my toe and kept moving.

Out here, nothing holds its shape for long — sand shifts, stone crumbles, metal rusts away. Today there was no past or future; nothing ahead or behind. Back on the tailgate, the weight of things collapsed into the moment. We had consolidated eons of time into a walk in the moonlight, solving the world’s problems and leaving the answers in the reef, concerned only with the thin stretch of now and the slow work of moving forward. Abstractions absent, we inventoried what was left: a new set of wreckage, and a little more dust on our boots.

Colin Rex is a Colorado-based photographer whose work captures the raw, often fleeting details that shape remote landscapes around the world. His approach is slow and intentional, shaped by long days in the field and a deep curiosity for purpose and place. Recent projects continue his exploration of remote landscapes across the American West, focusing on the tension between human presence and the natural world.

Originally written for Dad Grass in April 2025. Check out the accompanying playlist below!