Observations and Instructions

Photo by James Drury of the Wedge in the San Rafael Swell

Observations and Instructions

You drive through a desolate landscape of high desert, strange rock formations (we call it Dinosaur Poop  acres, very rare rock formations), where colors range from tan to brown to slate with occasional flashes of green. In March you might see Bald and Golden Eagles as you drive beneath a migratory skyway meandering over the Desert Lake Waterfowl Management Area. If viewing luck is with you, you might spy antelope.  

The gravel road continues to rise gradually as you drive through these long rolling hills which give way eventually to a dense pygmy forest of Pinyon Pine and Utah Juniper. About thirty minutes into the drive, passengers are beginning to wonder. “Where in the world are we going?” At forty minutes they are sure this is a fool’s Errand, a Trip to Nowhere and a Colossal Waste of a Good Afternoon. 

At about the fifty-five to sixty minute mark, they are usually speechless for some few seconds because the road has risen up in front of them exactly at the place where the world drops away to reveal The Wedge Overlook, Utah’s Mini-Grand Canyon. When speech returns you hear:

“Stunning. Incredible. We had no idea there was anything like this out here in the middle of this nowhere.”

The San Rafael River carves its way 1200 feet below you. The eons of erosion reveal geologic history in the several sandstone formations, Carmel, Navajo, Kayenta, Wingate, Chinle and the oldest of all, the Moenkopi. Ledges, cliffs, tumbled-down boulders the size of trucks, shale fields, the multi-colored revelation stretching three miles above the San Rafael River in its rolling green switchback journey which eventually wanders out to join the Green River.

This is a place of surpassing beauty, vistas that can make your heart skip more than a few beats and fill your eyes with tears. This landscape surprises you at every turn if you are willing to give yourself over to rocks, sparseness, emptiness, desolation, petroglyphs and pictographs in unexpected places. Yet, once given up, you find yourself filled by wonder and awe, your breath like incense rising on the anticipation of the holy. 

Is there a lesson here? Poet Mary Oliver clearly says yes.  Instructions for living a life:  Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

The Psalmist also knows. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace… Isaiah 52:7a.

Instructions for sharing the landscape of our faith: celebrate our giftedness in Christ. Pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Rejoice together in all things.

James Drury

Price, Utah