and Gallup on Route 66. due north for 120 miles across the 

 Navajo Reservation to Route 60. and thence hy that road via 

 Mexican Mat on the San Juan River to Blanding in Utah. The 

 first lap of this trek follows the east face of the Black Mesa 



This is a seemingly endless barrier of mountains which runs 

 north for mile after mile. Throughout its length it is carved into 

 a giant phalanx of pagoda-like objects interspersed with fine 

 natural imitations of the temple of Angkor Vat in Cambodia, and 

 is of all colors from a dull puce through grays and glowing 

 browns to a sanguinary red. For a long stretch there is a parallel 

 wall about a mile away, but this is in reverse, being eroded into 

 a succession of notched gullies the sides of which are slashed 

 with bands of glaring white alkalinity. The valley between is 

 clothed in considerable scrub and some shrubbery which at the 

 bottom forms a thick, pale blue carpet made up of a kind of 

 sage. A dry river bed meandering through the valley is whiter 

 than new snow under an alpine sun. due to an accumulation of 

 this alkaline substance. 



This valley finally opens out. and you come out upon a vista 

 of low. rolling downs clothed in scattered dusty sage going off to 

 the horizon. But no sooner have you advanced a few miles onto 

 this rolling plain — named the Defiance Plateau — than the 

 ground drops abruptly away from beneath your feet, and you 

 find yourself looking straight down into a world which is com- 

 pletely incredible. Here the land has been gouged away along 

 another wall-like rampart fronting a level, olive-colored plain. 

 This rampart also is red but with a distinct purplish tinge, and 

 it is sandblasted into smooth curves, bulges, and vertical potholes 

 of gargantuan dimensions, some forming globular caves. It goes 

 off both ways as far as the eye can see. But what adds the ulti- 

 mate touch of fantasy is that, between the bulges of its face, 

 there are here and there vast cones of fine, blue-gray dust and 

 small pebbles that seem to have been poured over the rampart 

 by some monstrous wheelbarrow. Yet there is no such material 

 anywhere above today, either on top of the cliff or, as may 

 readily be seen, in the towering red mountains beyond. Wan- 

 dering about among these intricate miniature canyons that lead 

 back into the upper plateau, often via natural arches of winding, 

 smooth-walled caves, one finds oneself in a terrifying sort of 

 sandstone nightmare. The floor is absolutely level: there is no 

 life to be seen in the daytime; the silence is profound; the heat 

 is so terrific you can both see it and move it about by making 

 hand-passes in the air. Here our world of living things, blue 

 waters, and green grass seems to disappear altogether. 



The platea as a whole is not just arid: it is in many places 

 and over vast stretches frankly naked and often apparently skin- 

 ned to boot, so that you see not only the ancient skeletal struc- 

 ture of the earth itself but masses of its very entrails, so to speak. 

 There is an area down in the Arizona part called the Painted 

 Desert which, at sunset, looks as if it had been splashed with 

 blood, but there are other much more striking places that are 

 heaved and contorted into the most awe-inspiring masses of 

 geological chaos. One is the Hovenweep National Monument, 

 just north of the San Juan River. This is a succession of 

 swooping plains, clad in red dust and speckled with little tufts 

 of scrub, separated from one another by vast walls, barriers, 

 towers, and other natural edifices of red rock, all sculptured in 

 shapes so fantastic they defy description. Some of these mon- 



Arizona's most notable petrified forest is composed of logs 

 consisting of opal and jasper lying among miniature 

 canyons of pale gray and mauve-colored dried clays and 

 congealed muds 



stroslties stand about singly; others maw together but have 

 narrow "doorways" through which you may peck Into further 

 canyons beyond— all lifeles.s. painted, and shimmering In Ihe 

 glutinous heat. 



GREEN EYRIES 



But the platea is not all like this. On its surface stand several 

 isolated volcanic peaks clothed in lush forests— such as the 

 11.440-foot Abajo Peak just north of this ruddy desert - and there 

 are great tongues of forested uplands stretching onto it from the 

 mountains all around. Probably the most lovely trip I have made 

 in the United Slates was on the terrifying little boulder-strewn 

 dirt road that crawls up the almost perpendicular sides of 

 mountains over the Douglas Pass between Grand Junction aid 

 Vernal, Utah. The road starts out well and enters a sort of 

 diminutive badlands of bare clay cliffs, followed by a narrow 

 valley choked with a sort of chaparral of dense tall bushes. It 

 then deteriorates into a gravel track, but it goes up and up to a 

 magnificent fir and spruce forest on top. The pass is knife-edged, 

 and beyond stretches a vast valley filled with lakes at vaiious 

 levels, all surrounded by massed forests of all manner of conif- 

 erous and broad-leafed trees. The air is here filled with golden 

 eagles: I counted ten on the wing at one time. 



The valley leads down through a lush series of meadows, 

 each with its own groupings of bushes, sedges, and flowering 

 herbs. Here are massed willows and alders, wire and swamp 

 grasses. On the slopes are dry meadows crowded with Colorado 

 chipmunks, golden-mantled ground squirrels, and flickertails. 

 Magpies, piiion jays, blackbirds, and cowbirds are everywhere, 

 and there are many ravens. Slowly, junipers and pifions come 

 down the slopes and sage takes over the valley bottom, and then 

 one comes upon a grove of great cottonwoods that line the banks 

 of the White River. After this, desert scrub is met on the top of 

 a bluff composed of fantastic rock formations. Beyond is the 

 Yampa River, also lined with patches of cottonwoods. Here we 

 come once again to the gateway to the north and the Wyoming 

 Basin. And here we find what is perhaps the most remarkable 

 exhibit in this incredible province. This lies twelve miles east 

 of Vernal, where the Green River emerges from Split Mountain. 



GRAVEYARD OF THE MIGHTY 



The feet of the mountains here are composed of a most unlikely- 

 looking jumble of different rock strata, alternating between hard 

 massive sandstones and materials so soft that they are often 

 little more than dried mud. All these strata slope inward toward 

 the ragged peaks beyond, like a disorderly shelf of different- 

 sized books, tattered and dog-eared and some of them reduced 

 by monstrous termites to mere piles of dust. These rocks are of 

 many colors, ranging from smooth pastel grays to pinks and 

 even greenish blue. They are for the most part bare, but some 

 of them support a stunted growth of greasewood and sage, and 

 gnarled junipers dot the surfaces of the cliffs or cluster in hol- 

 lows. It is here, among these lesser foothills, that nature saw fit 

 to establish a most extraordinary graveyard some hundred and 

 thirty million years ago. 



It appears that, at that time, this place was the delta of a large 

 river, probably on a flood plain bordering a lake rather than a 

 sea. This seems to have been of considerable extent and to have 

 supported a lush flora There seem to have been marked seasons, 

 for there is much evidence of floods during which coarse-grained 



213 



