The Garden of Faraway Places: Stalking the Wonders of Canyon Country

        I will confess to feeling a little guilt over my blatant desire to rave about the wonders of Canyon Country in the great American Southwest.... with the clear implication that everyone who hasn't been there should drop whatever they're doing and rush out to distant parts to see these amazing spectacles for themselves. 

         Fortunate are those who can take ten days in the latter part of May to fly to northern Arizona and pop in on the Grand Canyon, then work around a few mountains to visit the national parks in southern Utah -- those similar miracles of besotted nature given a couple of billion years to work on the landscaping and thus produce the landforms on view at Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks. They're on display, these natural Disney Lands of deep time and the river, of wind and rain, and of the tectonic forces that changed the face of the continent and drained the Western Ocean, lifted the land and exposed to the forces of erosion the hidden wealth of that 1.8 billion years of layered earth, rock, fossil and mineral making. 

           People have jobs to do. Children to raise. Aging relatives to take care of. 

            Still, when you do find yourself with the time and the means, there are many worse things you can expend those resources on than venturing many miles across a broad continent to take a good long gander at what Nature has wrought in particularly well-fashioned places such as these matchless canyon parks. 

            In short, how wonderful, surpassing (and surprising) expectations our expedition to these national parks proved to be. 

            Acting on guesswork, intuition, a guide book, and a bunch of websites, we pursued a plan to spend parts of three days on the Grand Canyon's south rim, two days on the north rim, a day's jaunt through the Arizona desert to see some 900-year-old Pueblo ruins; then up to Utah to spend a couple days each in Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park... And happily discovered there 'another America,' so utterly different from our home base here in New England; and so worthy of taking in with the senses and, perhaps, contemplating -- how does that line go? -- in 'tranquility'?             So I'm back to tranquility, I guess, as long as I don't spend too much time with the newspaper or online.

            Anne and I took hundreds of photos, and I'm trying to whittle them down to a usable, keep-able size, while composing from notes a family-keepsake narrative of our days on the 'trails.'
             Some high points and challenges:  

First Peek at the Grand Canyon,
South Rim

            Our first flight, the long one, takes us from Boston to Phoenix, where the temp is 92 degrees. A second hop, all of 20 minutes, lands us to Flagstaff. There we rent a car and drive for an hour and a half or so up to the Canyon. Sunny most of the way, growing a little mixed-clouds as we approach. The park at last, and my 'senior card' gets us in free --a free pass! what a deal! . … From the Visitor Center it's a short walk over to the rim trail. It’s see-through metal-fenced. We see the upper reaches of the South face as we grow near --which are amazing -- and then close enough to the fence rail to see the whole wondrous Big Bang! façade and we’re in awe. 

            A religious experience right off the bat.

            Anne takes some photos on her phone. I don’t have my camera, it’s still in the car. I had no idea that the canyon rim was so close to the visiting center parking lot. Had no idea where 'it' was in this place for which we have journeyed almost 2,000 miles.

            We walk, among scores of tourists, like us, the recently arrived, all taking pics, selfies, herding kids, dragging dogs, climbing around the fence wherever they can to get closer. We walk out on some of the fenced in, lower points… and so shortly reach Manter’s Point, for its classic panorama: 

              Stick your body out here, look all around you, left and right, and straight ahead.  

              Wish like hell you had your camera.

Second Day at South Rim 

            We hike along the rim trail, and up and down the far more challenging Bright Angel Trail until exhaustion claims me, and we take the shuttle bus back. We nap and, on waking, realize we are now in the 'golden hour' before sunset when, as a park ranger told us, the slanted light dazzles the array of color tones in Nature's great portrait of Earth, Rock, and Time that is the canyon wall.

            Clouds, some of them dark, cover the western sky, so we're not expecting much. But then we see gaps in the clouds permit arrows of radiance to pick out and illuminate segments of canyon wall. Camera in hand this time, I snap and snap and snap. 

Wupatki Pueblo, 

             a National Monument in the Arizona desert, was built during the 12th century CE and occupied as thriving agricultural village and trade center for about 150 years. The area was settled after a volcano isolated some farming communities. People return 100 years later, to find that they can plant corn in the recovering soil, the thin ash surface layer helping hold water in the earth. We see this ash, the still evident result of a geologic event taking place a millennium ago, covering swaths of surface land, hillsides, and some entire hills. Black hills endure here.

           The Pueblo people built the red-stone pueblo structures here from local stone and used clay for mortar. Some larger rocks were incorporated into the structure. A number of small rooms served as living quarters for connected families or ritually important tribal figures. As we explore the red-stone Pueblo, rain clouds gather on the mountainous horizon, while the sun remains strong overhead. 

The bigger force is the constant, high, gusty winds. Wind like that must dry the land and keep it dry. After a few minutes it starts to make me crazy with the desire to find shelter, or a wall to lean behind, any way to put something between me and the wind. 

At Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah,

light snow begins falling shortly after we arrive at our lodging, which at first I regard as a great novelty – 'Gee,' I think, 'remember seeing snowflakes at Bryce at the end of May...' Snow grows stronger; next time I look the evergreen shrubs outside our window are showing that scenic wintry look.

By morning six to eight inches have fallen, and slogging is hard on the park's open trails. Apparently most of the park is closed. The central ‘amphitheatre,’ however, where the views are stunning, is open to visitors. We drive to Sunset Point and join hundreds of variously dressed visitors picking their way along paths already turned to slush. The views at the outlook points are misted. We take the shuttle bus to Bryce Point, the crown of creation in this conspicuously showy park and find, with hundreds of others, that the view is almost all snow-fogged in. Half an hour ago, someone says, you could see everything. We go back to our lodging.

          In the late afternoon, however, when we return to the park the veil of mist has been removed and the view is clear to a horizon many miles away. The "hoodoos," the term given to these oddly humanoid figures of rounded red-stone columns (wearing their little snowcaps) line up for inspection. 

Wednesday May 22,  Zion National Park

           We get up and drive to the ‘east’ entrance through the 'famous' -- at least to park groupies -- ‘tunnel’ of switch backs and heavy traffic, cars pulling off the road wherever there’s any hint of space to gawk at the high walls, and cliffs, and multi-colored towers all round us, the road hair-pinning so frequently I'm afraid to take my eyes it to take in the truly astonishing mountain scenery through which mankind has chiseled this dramatic pass through god's damnedest country: these pinnacles, pyramids, domes, temples, cathedrals and fortresses of eroded rock -- as the painter who first shared them to the world at the St. Louis world fair (more than a century ago) most eloquently described them to a disbelieving public, saying in effect "you can't make this stuff up."

            I'm glad we went to see these miracles of time and mineral nature for ourselves. They are all really there.