Ever stumbled upon a hidden trail that takes you to a cliff with patterns that look like a giant, natural canvas—thought you’d love to hear about it.

That place is called the Painted Canyon in the Sierra Nevada. A quick Google search for “Painted Canyon Sierra Nevada” pulls up the photos—check the first result, it’s the same cliff that looks like a giant abstract painting.

I was chasing a rumor that some locals called it “the canyon that paints itself.” One summer morning I started out on a little dirt track that the road cut off and found a staircase carved by weather. Every time the sun hit the cliff face the colors shifted—reds, oranges, deep blues—like the sky had decided to paint a mural right on the rock. I didn’t have a fancy camera then, just a notebook and a sketchpad, so I marked the spot and walked back the same way next week. By then I’d realized the canyon had a rhythm, a hidden rhythm that only shows up when the wind and light are just right. That’s how it lived up to the name.