Tuesday, June 7, 2011

A Long Journey in Rock

“ They set out from Oboth and camped in Iye Abarim, in the wilderness that faces Moab toward the sunrise. . . .the slopes of the ravines that lead to the settlement of Ar and lie along the border of Moab. . . . “Fire went out from Heshbon, a blaze from the city of Sihon.  It consumed Ar of Moab.” –Numbers 21


Now that I’m in Moab, The journey along I-70 getting here seems too beautiful to match in all my anticipated hiking.  See here some of what I saw today.







Santa Fe at 7,000 feet and central Utah at the same elevation, their piñon pines look the same.













Behind their whitewashed nooks a monster lurks, just the way they knew it would.















Home is where you find it or build it or set up its pole.  It’s where the storms can't get, most of the time.














Good cross ventilation is the earmark of all desert dwellings.















Landing gear still in place, the petrified giant rests near other Anasazi ruins.















Many caves between Pakistan and Afghanistan, between California and New Mexico, many places to hide.

3 comments:

  1. Dear Sharon, I am happy you had magnificent sights as you traveled amidst the rocks. Now we will compare notes as we are leaving for the Yellow Mountains tonight, an overnight train, 8 hours and we may "pitch our tent" in a lovely hotel, though, on the bottom and then at the top and wake up with clouds below us and no internet... so if you don't hear a flute playing in the distance you will know where we are, rock and cloud viewing... thinking of our connections with you, dear friend, and sending love amidst our now simultaneous journeys!

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  2. Naturally beautiful and rugged in appearance, these mountains have a charm of their own. What could have caused their unique formations and sculptured look? Am guessing both heat and snow have played their part together what man cannot artistically achieve, but then again, I don't really know anything about Utah and its weather patterns. But what I do see is that you have a natural calling to geographic beauty, which you have so magnetically drawn us to too. :)

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  3. Thanks Mandy and Kathabela for commenting here. Many more people have commented by email, but you are the brave ones, ready to face the world, the greatest earth on show, and what a show it gave today.

    Mandy, the formations are sandstone deposited millions of years ago in a huge inland sea. The land rose and the sea ran away, then rain and the free-thaw cycles of myriad winters sculpted the rock in strange and wondrous ways. Hard to believe isn’t it.

    Kathabela, Yellow is a kind of mountain I did not see today. I saw red, white, gray and blue mountains, but no yellow. Even green is rare, so bare these rocks are. I await your arrival in kin imponderable mountains, and your return to the real world of internet.

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