At two thousand feet above sea level, the desert?s a frying pan. Everything is sizzling in a mirage of buzzing locusts and deep blue sky. The sun glares on everything. In deep sandstone canyons, desert varmints can find some type of relief from the relentless heat under the cover of red rock cliffs. Right now is not the time for me to venture too far out, snd I was pondered why I hadn?t been visiting too many places. It is still inhospitable out there. Summer will remain in Dixie until around the first October. That is when summer starts to fade in red rock country. Later in the fall, this area opens up more. Rattle Snakes are gone for the season but the desert still blooms.
If I can, I am going to venture out to Toroweap, a three thousand foot drop down down to the Colorado River. The Arizona Strip is a phenomenal place. I can guarantee that it is one of the quietest and unearthly spots on Earth. When you pass over the strip on your way to the overlook, you?re actually passing through another world of surreal wasteland desert.
So I am waiting for the weather to cool off in Dixie, so I can travel down into the mysterious labyrinths of this ancient land. If you?re a city dweller, and I took you to some of these places, you?d never want to return to your old life. There is a beauty, a silence that human beings have broken their ties to. Like some, I have not forgotten certain things. I know of a beauty that I will never put down. Ever since I was little, I had a soft spot for the wilderness and its purity, but I don?t see it as pristine; humans have been apart of this land since the beginning of time. The mystery is in all the generations upon generations of human being that come and gone.
One day, things will change. They always do. Civilizations come and go. In geological time, it is the twinkling of an eye. For a very short time, I will enjoy my small, small existence on this beautiful planet that we know as our mother.