Depicted here is dissolution; a dissolving of rock over the eons of time by wind and rain.
Heavy winter rain usually delivers dense amounts of vegetative growth in the spring here in the Sonora desert. Then later in the year, during July and August when our heat reaches maximum temperatures, the vegetation becomes dry tender for the flash fires we have here caused by the late summer storms. Lightning along with the high winds will ignite the dried vegetation burning much of the growth. Afterwards, smoke will settle in the low canyons like clouds as you see here in the image.
Much of the progress I've accomplished here and in other of my previous renders are attributed to those helpful guys: Ryan Archer, Frank Basinski, Seth, Martin Huisman, Walli, dandelO, Hetzen; and many others. And, thank goodness for Terragen 2 and the Planetside Forum.
I've placed the .tgd file for this image in the Image Sharing section if you are interested in working with it. Note: The low elevation part of the file is incomplete and could be completed with a little more work. My interest here for this image was concentrating on the higher elevation rock forms.
