What Lies Beyond the Horizon?

Gold butte glows in the sitting sun in Canyonlands National Park, UT

There is something about a horizon that has always captured my attention.

Perhaps it is especially noticeable where I live. Out here on the Kansas prairie, the land doesn't always give us much to look at vertically. There are no towering mountains or deep canyons to stop the eye. Instead, the land stretches outward, sometimes seemingly forever.

And the sky becomes enormous.

I've noticed the same thing in the high plains and in the mountains. The farther the landscape reaches, the more the horizon seems to invite us to look beyond it.

A friend once made a comment about one of my photographs that stayed with me. He said that the horizon invites us to imagine what lies beyond.

I like that.

Maybe that's part of what draws me to photography in the first place.

A photograph can capture a moment, but it can also leave a question unanswered.

What is beyond there?

I took this photograph at Canyonlands National Park. The landscape itself is remarkable—the cliffs, the layers of rock, the colors—but what catches me most when I look at this image isn't simply what is in front of me.

It is everything beyond it.

The horizon seems to disappear into the distance. The sky opens above the landscape, and somewhere beyond those distant formations is something I cannot yet see.

And perhaps that's the point.

We don't always need to know what lies beyond the horizon before we decide to go looking.

In just a couple of days, I'll be heading west again.

I'll make one of my favorite stops along the way at Monument Rocks in west Kansas. I've photographed that landscape before, but I never seem to tire of it. There is something about standing among those ancient formations beneath an enormous Kansas sky that makes me want to keep looking.

And then I'll continue north toward Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

I'm hoping to photograph wildlife. I'll be looking for landscapes, changing light, mountains, water, and whatever unexpected moments happen to cross my path. I have plans, of course, but photography has taught me that some of the best photographs are the ones you couldn't have planned.

I don't know exactly what I'll find.

And that's part of the excitement.

Maybe there will be elk in the morning mist. A bison standing alone beneath a dramatic sky. A mountain reflecting in still water. Perhaps a landscape I've seen a hundred times in photographs will look completely different when I'm standing there with a camera in my hands.

Or perhaps I'll simply find myself stopping somewhere along the road because the light has changed and the horizon is asking me to look a little farther.

That's enough reason to go.

The older I get, the more I appreciate that there is still something beyond the horizon.

Something I haven't seen.

Something I haven't photographed.

Something I haven't experienced.

And sometimes, the only way to discover it is to accept the invitation and go.

So, in a couple of days, I'll be heading out.

Kansas will be the starting point. The horizon will be the invitation.

I can only imagine what lies beyond.

And I intend to go see.