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2004 October 29-31
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Hey, look up! Higher and even higher. Zion is about seeing a canyon from the bottom and understanding ascention. While the Grand Canyon is about looking down and Bryce Canyon is an intimate experience at nearly human scale, the rock detail at Zion climbs heavenward. Zion has mineral color just as Bryce does, but its color comes from living plants, colorful foliage and streaks on the rocks from tree sap dripping for generations. The official government web page tells a lot about the park, more than my collection of thumbnails.
My across-the-street neighbor Greg suggested an aviation adventure to Utah, I already flew to Bryce Canyon, so Zion was next on my list. Greg is a pretty serious hiker, especially with his companion walking stick Eleanor, a magnificant eagle with two babies which he carved himself from a single Saguaro rib. Throughout our hikes at Zion, Eleanor was a conversation piece for others along the trails.
I approached the trip eagerly and cautiously. On the positive side, I would share the experience with somebody who loves hiking and vista-viewing at least as much as I do. On the negative side, the two of us (three counting Eleanor) would be squeezed into a small airplane for two and a half hours each way, we might be seriously mismatched in our hiking ability, and we might find each other's company tiresome. None of these negatives came to pass. We also had the usual aviation weather risks, higher in Utah than Arizona. There were some scattered-to-broken clouds on our way from Deer Valley (DVT) to Kanab (KNB) but the way back was "severe clear" with some light turbulance under small, puffy cumulus clouds.
Zion National Park has hiking trails on both sides of the park road which runs along the river at the bottom of the canyon. Alas, there was a rockslide on the trail to Hidden Canyon and Observation Point, so our hiking was limited to Angel's Landing and some of the easy trails at the bottom, Emerald Pool and Weeping Rock. The sandy, slippery sandstone and my running shoes made the Angel's Landing hike difficult for me.
Without the wealth of hiking on the other side of the park, we decided to take a day trip to Bryce Canyon where we hiked the Queen's Garden trail early enough that it wasn't too muddy and stopped at Red Canyon on our way back. The ranger at the Red Canyon visitor's center recommended the Arches trail which was truly a delight. Red Canyon is a secret stop along Utah State Route 12 and most of us drive by without appreciating the beauty here.
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Normally never at a loss for words, I come up short when trying to describe a place like Zion. It is part of our planet's most pleasant heritage, a statement of beauty created by geological, meteorological, and biological forces with the patience of millions of years of time. The plant life at Zion is an integral part of the environment, the colors of the autumn leaves and the wildflowers along with the rocks stained with millennia of tree sap.
Perhaps the beauty isn't within Zion but within us.
If we lived spaceside,
then we might be similarly enamored
of the red Martian landscape under a pinkish sky
and the enormous majesty of
Olympus Mons
on a summer day.
Born and raised sunside,
living my entire life on the Earth and being part of the Earth,
my soul is elevated by Zion.
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Today is 2009 January 6, Tuesday 00:57:07 Mountain Standard Time 344 visits to this web page. |
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