Drive to Zion's

In some ways it is impossible not feel that as one drives thru the west that one is passing back in time. Not just to the days of the pioneers and native Americans, but even more anciently to when no one lived in this vast desert space and only the forces of wind and water and relentless sun shaped the landscaped. Although the hand of man is obvious in the road and telephone poles and to some extent irrigated green fields, the stronger, more timeless relentlessness of the desert is the most striking visible feature. And beyond them, the jagged mountain ranges. Not worn down yet like the Appalachians by thousands of years of wind and rain. These ranges are still young when measured by geographical time and yet ancient when measured by the short lives of human endeavor.
We pass the blackened carcasses of pine trees, which for all I can tell, are remnants of the fires that burned thru the area more than ten years ago. U2’s Joshua tree album is playing on the radio, appropriate for the landscape we are passing thru, but also as we pass thru Scipio appropriate as the very soundtrack that accompanied the first of many unlucky car breakdown events near Scipio that began one summer night 19 years ago when VT and I were driving back from the Shakespeare festival. So far so good, but we have to pass back thru here on our way back…