Reflections on southeast Utah

I recently had the chance to travel for a couple of weeks in southeast Utah.  It's a part of the American landscape I had always wanted to explore.  So when some friends (wonderful OLCV donors!) said I could stay at their place near Moab, I jumped and used it as a home base for exploration.

Here are some photo highlights.

Of course, the photos in some sense both do more justice and less justice than words to describe the landscape.  I spent time along the Colorado River, in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Natural Bridges National Monument, Goblin State Park, and countless canyons on Bureau of Land Management lands near Moab, in the San Rafael Swell, and along the Colorado. 

It's hard to describe the majesty of the area.  I expected "red rock."  But red only was a single hue in a rainbow of colors.  I was expecting "big rocks."  But in many instances it was the small intricate geology and desert plant life that astounded. 

I knew there would be natural arches.  But I wasn't ready for the size and variety.  Nor for the amazing array of other wildly different rock formations and the ingenuity of trail planners in mapping routes along rock fins and between and around areas that would seem untraversable. 

Arches is just half an hour from Canyonlands, but they're nothing alike.  Even in the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands is radically different than the Needles section to the south of it.  (Personally, I think the "needles" look more like "mushrooms" but I suppose the Needles section of Canyonlands sounds better on maps than the Mushrooms Section would have).

I came away from the two weeks grateful to the many people whose past work helped protect this natural legacy for those of us today to explore.  I was grateful to the current leaders who fought so vigorously in the last year to stop oil and gas leasing in and around the Parks proposed by the outgoing Bush administration.  (Thank you Interior Secretary Salazar for blocking these leases!).

And I came back ready to keep battling to defend Oregon's (and the nation's) natural legacy so that 100 years from now, somebody else will have a similar opportunity to marvel at the earth in all its glory.

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Utah Highlights 2008