On a mountain bike ride the other day I had to stop and admire an unusual canyon. It did have vertical walls about 100 feet high. But what made it visually impressive was the unusual width of the canyon floor. It was over 100 meters wide.
There was no water visible of course -- it is southern Nevada, after all. But the flat canyon floor had such impressive graceful curves, left by rampaging water, that I found myself gawking! And yet, I didn't take a photo of it, probably because cameras are obsessed with the vertical and the perpendicular. This was fun in a different sort of way. But it would have been a great place for an overhead drone photograph.
I like to visualize alluvial fans of gravel, coming down from the mountains as a slow-moving glacier. The analogy is not very close actually, but the image is irresistible. This canyon was the "fast lane" on this giant ramp of gravel.
The whole thing seems metaphorical, with every individual person being like a small and insignificant pebble, dragged along by their society on its way downhill.
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