Zeitgeist Zephyr

The American landscape is a complicated animal as any of its numerous explorers and citizens can readily attest.  The landscape is capable of rousing every possible emotion of a person while simultaneously leaving them without words or a single thought to describe what their senses are being presented with.  Any attempt to further expand on a subject that has volumes of factual information and an equal sum of attempts to characterize the continental landscape would be fruitless on my part.  However there are affects that the American landscape has on every person that crosses it that are undeniable and while perhaps not at the forefront of thought of each weary traveler, upon their return home a change has occurred that is undeniable, yet un-measurable in scope.

A century of easy access to the automobile has transformed the American landscape into a vast unending plot of land spanning oceans to one that is cris-crossed with roads as easily accessible to the casual traveler as birds have access to the air.  Where once people were confined to their region of the country, with dreams of traveling elsewhere perhaps being realized just once, if ever, in their life, the entire continent can now be reached in 3 very long days of traveling by someone with a central location.  Every road holds the potential of bringing a traveler to thousands of destinations, locally or farther away.  It is why, even in harder times economically, Americans do not lose or lack any ability to move about the continent.  Statistically, more people travel during times of economic hardship then any other time.

The investment that can and should be made in America’s vast landscape transcends anything that even a Ken Burn’s documentary can address.  The landscape speaks for itself.  From snow capped indigo mountains, framed by deep blue skies and amber plains to oceans meeting land by crashing into its high cliffs or kissing its shores on a tropic coast, the land itself speaks its own defense on the extent to which it should be valued.  That same voice though is what affects everyone, from environmentalists and ranchers to suburbanites and pop-stars.

Sometimes the voice is as loud as a mountain waterfall or a summer tornado, but sometimes it’s as soft as a sunset or wind rustling Aspen leaves through a mountain pass.  Often times the voice is something else entirely, a sweeping mountain vista or the smell of wildflowers blooming in spring on a prairie.  Indeed the voice comes in many forms, but when listened to, it has the ability to change a person from the inside out.

God spoke into existence creation and His echo can be heard everywhere in the American landscape.

Numerous road trips across the country have presented me with an opportunity to listen to God’s echo, and each trip has left me a little bit different from when I left home and hit the road initially.  It has been my conclusion that any landscape where the sights, sounds, smells and even touch of the land can overwhelm any of the advice provided by Western society, then it is a landscape worth listening to.  In my experience, no better insight into what life means has ever been offered to match the fruits of insight born by the land itself.

If I had to offer a new years resolution to anyone for 2010, it would be not just take a walk and smell the roses, so to speak, but rather to take a walk and take pause.  The voice of America’s landscape is elusive, but when it is heard, it transcends even the loudest preaching of a society dominated by information overload and over stimulation from electronic trinkets.  In terms of the three steps of advice that might be the only thing that sticks with you once you’re done reading this: unplug, pause, and listen.

You don’t need to be religious to hear what I call God’s echo, but I believe that in the landscape of this continent called North America, every person can find their purpose in life and useful insights to guide them through the daily grind.  Its not a huge time commitment and I hope that if you do decide to take time to unplug, pause, and listen that you will be rewarded with the same fruits that I have found.

There are few places in the country, and the world for that matter, that exhibit the beauty and grandeur of God’s creation more apparently than the appropriately named Zion National Park in Utah.  The name Zion itself evokes images of God’s kingdom on Earth.  

First preserved in 1909 under the name of  Mukuntuweap National Monument and later becoming a national park in 1918, Zion has had a sparse history of human habitation making among the most untouched national parks in the nation, save for the modern roads and tunnel paved into the canyon floor.  The earliest evidence of human occupation dates to around A.D. 500 by the Anasazi and Fremont people but by the year 1200, the canyon had been abandoned and received only passing visits by Paiute foragers in search of food.

European exploration of the area was very rare, with the only two significant parties passing through the area, but not the canyon itself, including the Dominguez Expedition in search of an overland route from Santa Fe, NM to Monterrey, CA.  The other noteworthy expedition into the area of Zion was a group of 16 men lead by Jedediah Smith, one of the many fur traders that explored the remote reaches of the Western U.S.It was only after the first land survey was conducted in 1908 that it garnered any significant attention and the spectacular nature of the terrain prompted it’s immediate preservation under the newly formed National Parks System a hundred years ago.  

I visited Zion a year ago on a whirlwind spring break road trip that took us from Kansas City to Los Angeles and back again, stopping over in places like Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon, and the Grand Canyon.  Of all of those places, including the Grand Canyon, I saw nothing more spectacular on that trip than Zion.  That is where a group of friends and myself will be traveling to this spring break to spend 5 days and 4 nights, as opposed to the hour or so that was spent on my last visit.

Due to the remoteness of the location and our projected unavailability of electricity and Internet service, I won’t be cataloguing every day of our experience as it happens, but will instead provide updates on the trip before we leave and then provide a day by day account of our experiences upon my return.  On our way out, there remains a remote possibility of reaching Bryce Canyon, but our trek is most likely to focus on the southernmost reaches of the Utah canyon country and the sweeping panoramas of Monument Valley in Utah and Arizona before traveling back through Colorado on our way home.  

I’ll take a lot of pictures and share the best here, but I can assure you that this starving granola will enjoy a great feast as he in the company of good friends takes in the sights, sounds, and smells of Zion National Park.   

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Sources:

History of Zion National Park: http://www.zion.national-park.com/info.htm#his

Picture:  http://www.usatourist.com/slideshows/southwest/images/Zion%20National%20Park%201.jpg