One of the 7 wonders of the world. My back yard. Life could never be the same when after a 10 minute ride to watch the sunset, the road ends and the ground falls out into an endless vastness filled with a changing palette of colors. Petrified history of half the age of the Earth solidified in 3D, dropping dropping dropping in elevation and time into the depths of the earth to times before the existence of mulit-celled organisms and Mars-like landscape. Light bounces off temples of rock and thick monsoon clouds sling rain, lightning, color, shadows, and rainbows onto an animal landscape built to send water flooding into the raging river and out to the ocean taking anything in its way with it. Cliff edges pulling the curious into its gravitational grip taps into one's deepest longing to fly and to descend into utmost adventure. From ancient ruins holding fingerprints in the mortar giving clues to those who left the petroglyphs, pictographs, and pottery to old mines scattered with the remnants of the canyon's economic struggle, broken lava dams which catostrophically flooded the canyon to colorfully faulted and folded sediment layers, fossilized lizard prints and dragonflies to sloth skulls and unclaimed skeletons, this place is a force to be reckoned with. It is not a place for the faint of heart or the weak in body. Hot as fire or topped with snow, dry as bone or bursting with water, this canyon is as wild and untamed as you could possibly imagine. To explore the depths and find her hidden secrets takes an enormous amount of everything you have: mind, body, and spirit.
The Mamma Canyon, she's got soul. She's sassy, but with proper respect she takes gentle care of you. From the shade of a single juniper tree amidst a mirage of superheated landscape to the cloud that shades your steps, a single spring trickle to a gushing waterfall from an unknown source, a water puddle amidst complete dryness to a hidden garden grotto full of darting hummingbirds and blooming flowers--she gives love to those who choose to know her and brings out the best in those who step to the challenge of self.
