What up PD?
I just got back from some hiking/backpacking in SE Utah. A buddy and I spent a day roaming Canyonlands' Island in the Sky district with the accompaniment of some high quality LSD. We dropped in the early afternoon and wandered through this enchanting, alien landscape.
Deep canyons expose hundreds of millions of years of sediment.
The trip alternated between giddy laughter and austere reverence, occasionally reaching states of sublimity.
We returned to mesa arch after the tourists had all left, just after sundown, and watched a full moon rise above this vast canyon.
SE Utah is an absolutely spectacular place...everyone should put Canyonlands/Arches national parks on their list of things to do before you die.
In the words of Edward Abbey:
"Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear—the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break. Turning Plato and Hegel on their heads I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.
Under the desert sun, in that dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime."