SUN TUNNELS || 41.3035° N, 113.8638° W
By Kathryn Knight Sonntag
I step inside. One, then another, four cylinders of concrete sky. I step inside the spinning cosmos. Star-holes glow above, forming constellations: Draco, Perseus, Columbia and Capricornus.
I emerge and stand on a circular concrete pad, marking the convergence of solar lines. Here I am made aperture, lens. The axis mundi made flesh.
To the east: Desert Peak, stained pink.
To the west: the winter sun, sliding into sky, circumscribed.
Brought into frame, streams of amber light bathe my eyes, pour down my body, back out into the land, speak of the ways the heavens make sense of Earth. Of exactly where I stand in the desert’s expanse. Of how I might grasp immeasurable creation, the wilderness — my home — on the day of shortest light.
Kathryn Knight Sonntag holds a master’s of landscape architecture and environmental planning and works as a land planner and writer in Salt Lake City. Her interest in the transcendent in the land shapes her creative pursuits, including her debut poetry collection, “The Tree at the Center.”
Artwork: Nancy Holt (American, 1938–2014), "Sun Tunnels," 1973–76, Great Basin Desert, Utah, concrete, steel, and earth, 9 feet 3 inches x 68 feet 6 inches x 53 feet; diagonal length: 86 feet. Each tunnel: 18 feet 1 inch x 9 feet 3 inches diameter, from the collection of Dia Art Foundation with support from Holt/Smithson Foundation, © Holt/Smithson Foundation and Dia Art Foundation, licensed by VAGA, New York.