The Most Beautiful Place On Earth
Created | Updated Feb 15, 2002
I know where the most beautiful place on this planet is, and I could tell you almost everything about it, if you want to hear, but there is a catch. I cannot tell you where it is, what it is called, or how to get there. If I told you any of this, you would all flock to this monument to nature's majesty, thereby ruining part of its charm, so I've got to keep my little secret. Besides that, you'd all probably tell me that "Oh, that's nothing, I've seen better" because you all have your own definition of beautiful (one of the reasons Helen of Troy is never actually described in Homer, if he described the most beautiful woman in the world, he'd cheapen her beautity). But here it goes, my own personal paradise, take it or leave it.
I can tell you that it is in a desert. In the middle of a dry desert, and to get there (from one direction) you have to drive through a strip mining town and be faced with exactly how low man's progress can bring natural beauty. But being, as it is, situated in such a dry local, and your own being tempered to the pornographic sight of a stripped mountain, this Canyon is suddently more beautiful.
There are not many Riparean Areas left in the Desert of the American South West, and certainly even fewer as lush as this one. After descending into a Canyon along a dirt road, over the stream several times, it becomes necisary to park the car and pay the registration fee (the government agree's with my protective nature towards the site and limits the number of people allowed in the canyon at once, you need a permit on your car and cash payed or you get slapped with a heafty fine). Then you begin the hike. The desert around you melts into a lush wilderness of green foliage along the banks of the year round stream that flows through the bottom of the canyon. The trail is lost and found again several times as you spend much of the hike actually knee deep in the stream itself.
Big Horn Sheep, though certainly not a common sight anywhere, inhabit this canyon in large enough numbers that I have seen them on two seperate trips. Once high above me on the rim of the canyon wall and at a distance. The second trip however I began the morning with a sighting of the magnificent animals on the canyon rim and finished the afternoon reacting to the sound of what I thought was an avalanche behind me, only to turn and see, not twenty feet from where I lay, helpless in my sleeping bag, a herd of these creatures. The dominant male stared straight at us with eyes so black and a face so noble that I felt ashamed. I also felt that he was quite unhappy and if he had wanted to he could have led his whole herd over us, trampling us to death because we were quite clearly in their everyday path towards the stream for their evening drink. A moment latter he led his herd straight up the side of the canyon wall, scaling on foot steep inclines that a human would need rock climbing aquipment to mount.
Evidence of cyotes, ringtails, black bears, and mountain lions are not uncommon. We've seen and hear snakes, but never had a problem. The birdlife is simply beautiful.
In side canyons I've found springs and waterfalls that made me gasp for breath because of their sheer granduer and beauty. Small caves in the middle of seemingly dry areas that were covered with moss and ferns, the insides of which would blow the mind of even the most experienced desert rat.
If you've never felt fresh spring water flowing over you, if you've never woken up in the morning to see the sun spilling down the canyon wall across the stream from you, if you've never spent a night looking at a sky so clear that you wish the moon weren't so bright because it blocks out stars, even though you can see more stars than you ever have before in you life, then you can't possibly imagine what I'm talking about. But that doesn't mean you can't see it.
I can tell you that it is in a desert. In the middle of a dry desert, and to get there (from one direction) you have to drive through a strip mining town and be faced with exactly how low man's progress can bring natural beauty. But being, as it is, situated in such a dry local, and your own being tempered to the pornographic sight of a stripped mountain, this Canyon is suddently more beautiful.
There are not many Riparean Areas left in the Desert of the American South West, and certainly even fewer as lush as this one. After descending into a Canyon along a dirt road, over the stream several times, it becomes necisary to park the car and pay the registration fee (the government agree's with my protective nature towards the site and limits the number of people allowed in the canyon at once, you need a permit on your car and cash payed or you get slapped with a heafty fine). Then you begin the hike. The desert around you melts into a lush wilderness of green foliage along the banks of the year round stream that flows through the bottom of the canyon. The trail is lost and found again several times as you spend much of the hike actually knee deep in the stream itself.
Big Horn Sheep, though certainly not a common sight anywhere, inhabit this canyon in large enough numbers that I have seen them on two seperate trips. Once high above me on the rim of the canyon wall and at a distance. The second trip however I began the morning with a sighting of the magnificent animals on the canyon rim and finished the afternoon reacting to the sound of what I thought was an avalanche behind me, only to turn and see, not twenty feet from where I lay, helpless in my sleeping bag, a herd of these creatures. The dominant male stared straight at us with eyes so black and a face so noble that I felt ashamed. I also felt that he was quite unhappy and if he had wanted to he could have led his whole herd over us, trampling us to death because we were quite clearly in their everyday path towards the stream for their evening drink. A moment latter he led his herd straight up the side of the canyon wall, scaling on foot steep inclines that a human would need rock climbing aquipment to mount.
Evidence of cyotes, ringtails, black bears, and mountain lions are not uncommon. We've seen and hear snakes, but never had a problem. The birdlife is simply beautiful.
In side canyons I've found springs and waterfalls that made me gasp for breath because of their sheer granduer and beauty. Small caves in the middle of seemingly dry areas that were covered with moss and ferns, the insides of which would blow the mind of even the most experienced desert rat.
If you've never felt fresh spring water flowing over you, if you've never woken up in the morning to see the sun spilling down the canyon wall across the stream from you, if you've never spent a night looking at a sky so clear that you wish the moon weren't so bright because it blocks out stars, even though you can see more stars than you ever have before in you life, then you can't possibly imagine what I'm talking about. But that doesn't mean you can't see it.
