Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Beth and I sat in a Moab diner, a map of the sprawling Canyonlands National Park unfurled between plates of eggs and mugs of hot coffee. Where to today? Canyonlands seemed so immense, we'd have to accept to visit a single section, with the promise to return to the park with more time. The Island in the Sky district was closest to Moab, but we decided to hit the less beaten path in the Needles district to the south. We could never expect just how un-beaten that path would be.

At times it felt like Beth and I were the first ones to discover these lands. But petroglyphs, markings on cave walls, acted as reminders that there were others well before our visit. The Newspaper Rock State Historical Monument displayed an impressive collection of ancient graffiti and millennia-old art. In fact, the accessible display is perhaps the single best trove of Indian rock art to be found on the continent.

A section of Newspaper Rock is shown below, showing a sampling of the drawings. Newspaper Rock acquired its name because early explorers originally thought the wall was used to as a communication point between and within native cultures. However, there is no proof that this wall served as an early form of written language; most likely it was a geological sketch pad, but stunning nonetheless.

Even modern pollutants on the rock were turning into history; a defiling etching at the top-left corner of this photograph shows a tourist's visit from June 1954.

Hiking onward, fauna and flora smiled at us, shining in the bright Utah sun. Colors were vibrant and the earth pulsed with desert life.

A snake slithered hurriedly across the path, starting my lovely bride. "He's more scared of you than you are of him," I reassured her.

I'm sure the snake was spooked by the large and clumsy creatures, but I wasn't so sure of my statement.

At left, a happy cactus opens up to rays of sunshine and the prying lens of an exploring troubadour.

A short hike to Pothole Point taught us about the ecological importance of potholes, shallow divots of the bedrock that collect rainwater in small puddles.

The potholes act as springboards for life for tadpoles of several shrimp species in the slickrock surface. Shrimp living in the desert in Utah? Yes, really.

Bethy and I could never quite figure out how the life got to this desolate place in the first place or how these microscopic invertebrates managed to survive the harsh climate.

Evaporation had sapped the community of water, so the mini ecosystem, shown at right behind Bethy, was finding a way to tolerate the drought.

Geoligic Time Includes Now

The view of the Needles District from the Pothole Point hike was magnificent (below).

Most of the round-trip hikes from the Needles trailheads were 10 miles or longer, and we weren't up for the challenge. The Confluence Overlook hike, which ends with a vista from over 1,000 above the merging Green and Colorado Rivers, would have to wait for another day. Instead, we hiked toward Lost Canyon. Signs warned us that, as the name suggests, it's easy to get lost, so we watched our steps carefully. At every turn in the road I took a picture, the modern-day equivalent to Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs to lead them home. Bless digital cameras . . .

fell

off a ledge.

But I grabbed on

and held on for my life;

memories flashed before me.

All right, so this never happened--

Beth and I were just being very silly.

In fact, the isolation and euphoria of the hike drove Beth and I a bit batty. We set up the camera's self-timer and tried to get a photo of us jumping, flying in midair off a small ledge on the rocks. We ended up taking about a dozen shots, and not once could we get our timing right. Two attempts are shown in the frames below, after one feeble attempt to look normal.

We stopped jumping off the ledge when I hurt my foot. It would not have been worth a funny photo if I was unable to hike back, I decided. I also decided I needed better hiking boots.

Altogether, we spent about six hours on the Lost Canyon trail. And on this easy trail, on a beautiful summer day in the national park, Beth and I saw no sign of another human being. Coming from Denver and headed to the High Sierra Music Festival, where we'd see friends from all walks of life, this was our moment to enjoy ourselves for what we were: husband and wife. I had never been happier.