Roads to wonder: Remote splendors are accessible
–NAVAJO NATIONAL MONUMENT – The walls of Betatakin lie covered in shadow and silence.
A woman comes down the asphalt path. In a short time we establish that we share a love of the Southwest. German. French. Navajo. “We have been breathless,” Teresa says.
They made their way across northern Arizona into Utah, where they looked into the emptiness of Bryce Canyon, a land of red hoodoos and other rock formations, a contrast of beauty and cold stone. From Bryce they came down from the hills and traveled long, straight highways to Antelope Canyon, a slot on the Navajo Reservation with walls of polished sandstone that change color as sunlight passes – reds, oranges, yellows, colors and shapes that stir the mind. Roads will take them everywhere. All across the Colorado Plateau, people drive roads to look out at empty landscapes, which is to say, places without roads. Paths cross, blacktop moves up and down canyons and carries us across great distances. You must walk to see the layers of life out there, the desert flowers, the grasses, bugs, rabbits, lizards, scavengers and predators that form the high-desert food chain. Somewhere north of here, Canyonlands, perhaps, the Italians moved along the overlooks.
We sit at home and flip through photos and dream about empty canyons, read about the geological carving of hoodoos and slots, ponder blank spots on maps. Blacktop and gravel, narrow and winding, broad and straight.
As more people move to the Southwest, they will demand more roads.
Open space with too many roads isn’t open space at all. A road is a road, and rarely has anyone planned a trip, packed a camera and gotten off the couch to go look at a road.
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