Travels: Canyonland National Park ~ Island in the Sky

Day #2 (Wednesday)

Canyonland National Park ~ Island in the Sky

Canyonland panoramic vista 100 miles of desert across to horizon

Sunrise on Colorado River drive. We get up at 5:30 am to capture the sunrise beauty and the trip along the Colorado River from Red Cliffs Lodge seems ever changing from the day before.

Sunrise drive down Colorado River into Moab

John enjoying the beauty

Entering Canyon... desert like

We drive to one of the three sections of Canyonlands park that is called the Island in the Sky. Canyonlands feels very different to me than Arches Park which seemed both inspiring and complex. This section of Canyonlands appears basically as a broad mesa carved out by the Colorado and Green rivers resting deep between sheer sandstone cliffs. Its panoramic vistas show a desert horizon stretching for 100 miles sprinkled with sparse vegetation. Fields of Indian rice grass and pinyon-juniper trees here survive on fewer than 10 inches of rain a year.

Could we be on another planet?

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act with legally defined wilderness as ".. an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Nine days later Canyonland National Park was established. The prime architect of this legislation was Stewart Udall, a Congressman who served as Secretary of the Interior (1961-69). This was a time when only cowboys, Native Americans and uranium prospectors would come to this place; when some sought to build the next big dam in this area Udall saw its wilderness rock beauty and fought to save it (under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson). In fact, I find from further reading that Udall enacted other major environmental legislation including 20 national historic sites and 56 wildlife refuges.

Plants to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife, are in fact plants to protect man. Stewart Udall

Wilderness a respite from complex technological society.

See Green River in distance

Udall stands in stark contrast to the current Secretary of Interior who has actually withdrawn National Monument Status from Bears Ears Utah established by Obama and has promoted drilling in national wildlife preserves. This rugged desert area in southeast Utah is 527 square miles and 337,598 acres of buttes, arches, spires and sculptured, desert landscape. John finds this place a spiritual experience. However, we both worry about what our current government is not doing to preserve these amazing places for our children and grandchildren.

We stop along the main park road at Shafer Canyon Overlook with views of the canyon and its treacherous descent where we learn Native Americans and uranium minors walked down!

Island in the Sky

John is concerned about how close I am going to the edge of the rim but I am not afraid of heights. (see upper right side of picture above)

There are no guard rails anywhere. I am concerned about John trying to reach me and the difference is that he is afraid of heights!

Wilderness a physical challenge ~ to be feared and to be revered.

John makes it but doesn't go too close to the edge

Next we go to Mesa Arch and hike out to the arch perched on the cliff’s edge.

Mesa Arch

A Rock is more than a rock: We learn from a movie at the National Park headquarters more about the scenic rock formations we have seen. Thousands of feet of thick salt beds were deposited 300 million years ago when a sea flowed into this region. So I imagine being a fish swimming around these spires and pinnacles. The sea eventually evaporated and residue from floods and winds blanketed the salt and were compressed as rock. The salt bed lying below was unstable and the pressure of the rock shifted and buckled the rock layers upward as domes and cavities. Faults beneath the earth caused vertical cracks and eventually arches leading to the salmon colored sandstone looking like a layered cake. As water seeped into the cracks and folds and ice formed bits of rock broke off and wind later cleaned out the rocks particles leaving a series of fins. The architect of this land is clearly the sun, water, wind and gravity.

Desert Life: We are told Native Americans used this area for thousands of years leaving behind a few petroglyph panels but unfortunately we haven't found any of these here. I suspect you need to hike further inland. Even so it is hard to imagine anyone living here with no water source and an arid desert where birds and animals are rare, at least during the day. Pinyon and gnarled juniper trees add a bit of green color to the red sandstone terrain. A few ravens greet us on the parking lot hoping for some crumbs.

Green Ephedra (Mormon tea)

Pricklypear

At this time no wildflowers are in bloom. Only low growing cacti, including pricklypear species, can survive the cold winters. This plant has tiny, irritating spines at the base of longer spines that defend agains animals. I am excited because I spot a collared lizard the size of one inch.

I learn that although desert soils appear barren, this dirt is alive with living organisms that bind soil together so they can support plant and animal life.

These are called “biological soil crusts” that prevent erosion, absorb water and provide nutrients to plants. I read about cyanobacteria, some green blue algae, lichen and fungi. However, a single footstep off the path can destroy hundreds of years of this important algae and lichen growth.