Reflections from Southern Utah

I traveled into the canyons of the Bryce Canyon, the Grand Staircase, and Capital Reef over the Labor Day Weekend.  My son-in-law, Ryan, and I hike some every day which certainly put our bodies (mostly legs) to the test.  I entertained a few thoughts during our treks.

First, the Earth is a very beautiful place.  I am glad to live here on this planet.  I am amazed at how everything I saw was fit to the place it lived.  There were shrubs growing in the cracks of rocks and looking very fit.  Everything fits its environment, its habitat.

Second, the wilderness doesn't care who I am.  It makes no professional, political, religious, or personal demands.  I only felt very elemental demands: gravity, friction, temperature, and then thirst, and that ant that was biting my knee.

Then, I wondered about the makers of the pictographs and petroglyphs we saw on our trip.  Who were these people, how did they live?  Were they happy?  And why are there no native rock artists today?  Has that art form been lost?  What would such works mean to us today.  In one site the rock had broken off and the art was lost forever.  Not even the canyon walls will last forever.