Note: If you're having a hard time reading this on a mobile device, change your email view settings to "mobile" or tip your phone to portrait view.
Today's story:
Greetings from Rockport, Texas
This blog is the second in a series of four about Cyndy Keesler’s and my six-week trip through the
Four Corners states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.
In all, we visited and/or hiked in five national parks, six national monuments, one national forest, one national preserve, one Navajo tribal park, three state parks, and one scenic backcountry area.
November 2 to 5: Zion National Park was originally called Mukuntuweap National Monument, a name from the language of the area’s indigenous Paiute nation that means “straight canyon.”
This land was set aside as a recreation site by the federal government in the early 1900s.
At that time, the National Park Service followed a protocol that every national park would be “one of a kind.” For example: Glacier National Park has glaciers, Rocky Mountain National Park is in the Rockies, and Grand Canyon is a canyon.
But Mukuntuweap was also a canyon. What to do? With some influence from the Mormons who had settled in Utah in the mid-1800s, it was decided that Mukuntuweap would become America’s “religious” national park.
Thus the name “Zion,” a Biblical Hebrew word that means “refuge or sanctuary.”
Indeed, Zion National Park is like a sanctuary … even more so than is the Grand Canyon where the visitor centers are on the North Rim and the South Rim and visitors look down into the canyon. At Zion, visitors look up at sheer rock walls of primarily oxidized red sandstone that tower higher than any cathedral and all of the world’s skyscrapers.
Even locations in the park have a religious overtone: Cathedral Mountain; The Grotto; West Temple and East Temple; Angel’s Landing; Great White Throne; Tabernacle Dome; The Three Patriarchs in reference to Old Testament prophets Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Towers of the Virgins; the Virgin River, named after Mary, the mother of Christ, that cuts through and formed the canyon; Kolob Canyon and Kolob Arch, with kolob coming from the Mormon tradition and meaning “the first creation”; and Temple of Sinawava, a Paiute word that honors the spirit of the Coyote.
Indeed, there is a great magnificent spirituality about Mukuntuweap/Zion that relates back to the Paiute Creation Story, which says that Water Woman and Coyote were responsible for bringing only the Paiute people to this place they call “home” and to which they will return “to make the leap into the spirit world.”
Cyndy and I hiked the paved 2.2-mile
Riverside Walk that originates in the Temple of Sinawava and where we encountered hundreds of people of all ages, sizes, and pace ambling next to the flowing waters of the Virgin River.
Also called Gateway to
The Narrows, this easy path morphs into a tricky trek to where the canyon becomes so narrow that the stream covers the entire canyon bottom and people in waders and with stout hiking poles wade to arrive at the source.
We also hiked the beautiful and quiet 7.6-mile
Sand Bench Trail where we encountered only one other couple.
November 6: We happened to spontaneously stop at
Pipe Spring National Monument, which is on the Paiute reservation and a collaborative effort between that nation and the US Department of the Interior.
There, we visited a fort, insidiously built by the Mormon pioneers to effectively cut off the natural water supply that was foundational to the hunter-gatherer Kaibab Paiute people as well as the vast herds of deer and antelope.
Grazing cattle, brought in by the pioneers and settlers, destroyed the natural vegetation and forever changed the landscape.
We also learned that, prior to the 1800s, Paiutes, a gentle people, had been enslaved by Spaniards as well as neighboring Navajos and Utes.
November 7 and 8: In Page, Arizona, we happened to be able to watch a launch of dozens of hot air balloons in the
Lake Powell Balloon Regatta.
At the launch, we conversed with crews as they filled their balloons with cold then hot air. Later, I was fortunate to help one crew pack their balloon and basket after the pilot had landed in a grocery store parking lot.
That afternoon, we went with a Navajo tour guide through the often photographed and picturesque
Upper Antelope Canyon as well as Rattlesnake Canyon, so named because of its many twists and turns, and Owl Canyon where we saw a roosting great horned owl.
The topography and evidence of ancient underwater deposits, more recent upheaval, and ongoing erosion make this place simply amazing. Words don’t do it justice; check out the photos online.
This was an all-day adventure that included riding in a Hummer from Page then on two-track gravel roads and single-track sand trails that accommodate only a four-wheel-drive, high-clearance vehicle. As one of our group said of the ride, “It’s part of the experience.”
November 9 and 10: We moved our trailer to the remote
Goosenecks State Park, so named because of the tight, tight bends in the San Juan River that flows about one thousand feet below the cliff where we parked our rig. The serenity was astoundingly peaceful.
On the 10th, we drove the dirt road through the absolutely divine
Valley of the Gods scenic backcountry area. We hiked for two miles in Bears Ears National Monument.
Then we drove the scenic loop through
Natural Bridges Natural Monument, so named because of its three natural rock bridges that were carved over eons by “meandering streams” that eventually wore through the rock wall that was once beneath the arching bridges.
Natural Bridges was the first international “dark park” and is acclaimed as “the darkest of the dark.”
From this latter monument, we could look back at the two buttes that sit atop a mesa in Bears Ears and, according to Navajo legend, represent the related rock formations after which this park is named.
~~~~~ ~~~~~
Thank you for reading my stories. Six Weeks in the Four Corners states, Part 3, will come your way in about a week.
