THE RATTLESNAKE, COILED, FITS NICELY IN THE PALM OF MY HAND. Even though in the early morning coolness he's too lethargic to strike, I carefully restrain the back of his distinctly triangular head with thumb and forefinger. We are too remote to risk even this petite injection. The snake's tiny rattles are silent, but his tongue flicks, trying to ascertain through smell what detains him. My warmth rouses him, and I carefully set the young snake back on the canyon's red-sand floor, returning him to his cold-blooded torpor. I'm feeling a tad reptilian myself this morning in the narrow canyon's cool recesses, even though outside the day's heat blasts. Such is the canyon Southwest's remarkable contradiction—and perhaps appeal—cool respite hidden in desert heat; close embrace in the widest of open spaces; sanctity in the austere. This is a landscape big enough to celebrate opposites.
On this early summer day, a friend and I hike the Buckskin, a slender Paria Canyon tributary, under a clear sky, at least what we can see of it. I open my arms wide and, without straining, drag the fingertips of each hand along both canyon walls. Hundreds of feet overhead, a winding slot reveals a thin blue line of sky. This comforting azure is no real assurance. In the desert, heated updrafts swell into rain clouds and dump localized torrents on unsuspecting canyons. Overhead: clear sailing; upcanyon (and unseen): a deluge. Hurtling downhill and powered by constrictions, a flash flood;s leading edge can blast through narrow canyons without warning, rolling elephantine boulders, uprooting cottonwood trees, stripping bedrock raw.
This canyon reminds us of our tenuous passage: Every so often we see, 20 feet overhead, tree trunks wedged by previous floods. The desert's dangers are odd bedfellows: hypothermia and heat stroke, thirst and drowning. But what lends the canyons great danger also gives great beauty. Although water-worn canyons are often scoured bare, their sensuous curves and smooth skin echo water's flow. Danger and allure.
Six miles in, we reach camp—lthe only one in the Buckskin, a small ledge perched halfway up the canyon wall, above flood level. We unshoulder packs, set dinner on the camp stove, and scramble up the crack above our kitchen, topping out on the Paria Plateau, one of many uplifts riding the Colorado Plateau's broad back. The stony expanse, dotted with sage, pinon, and yucca, undulates toward the horizon. At our feet, a two-foot-wide crack runs like a lightning bolt through stone, the only sign of the deep canyon below. We dare each other to jump it, but neither of us does, laughing at our timidity. Earlier today we found a dead coyote lying as if sleeping on the canyon's soft dry sand, not a mark spoiling its ruddy-gray fur, its perfect beauty. After long examination our only conjecture was the coyote had fallen from the height where we now stand, too curious or oblivious to the unobtrusive crack's meaning to notice its peril. Life and death.
Paria nests in the midst of the Colorado Plateau's most iconic landscapes. To the south, beyond the plateau's curve, lie Petrified Forest's painted sands, Grand Canyon's subterranean groove, and the still mysterious lands of Hopi and Navajo. North harbors Zion's redrock cliffs, Bryce and Cedar Breaks' terra-cotta hoodoos, the flying buttresses of Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef. To the east, Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument stretches in near roadless wonder. One could walk a lifetime here and never run out of awe. Paria itself lies within the Bureau of Land Management's Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, part of Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. In this place we walk surrounded by beauty. Surrounded by beauty, we walk.
Jon Ortner has also walked these places to our great good fortune, and brought back images to again embrace us in beauty. Radiant and subtle, Jon's landscapes work magic on us. Lingering over each page-turning wonder my shoulders relax, I inhale deeply. I am once again in my proper place.
Long and lean, the Great Southwest is a place difficult to capture on film. Jon's expertise catches nuances of light, cloudbursts of color, eons of space. The Southwest's framefilling vistas stretch out and breathe in Jon's distinctive panoramic format. We must turn our heads, use our bodies to experience these photographs just as we would in place. Jon's images of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument's narrow slots, Peek-A-Boo Canyon and Spooky Gulch, are enticingly clear and creatively rendered, especially given the great effort and perseverance required to lug camera gear to these remote niches.
Contemplating these photographs, one can almost feel sweat trickle between shoulder blades, the sun's bare-flesh intensity, water's improbable desert caress. These images also remind us of beauty's tender integrity, its life-threatening fragility. Jon's images call us to our own responsibility. They draw a circle in the sand within which wildness reigns. It will take everything in us to maintain that line. This landscape cannot encompass these opposites: beauty and ruin.
Tonight, back in our cliff-ledge camp, we eat dinner, replace the kitchen with sleeping bags, and joke about the startling consequences of rolling over in our sleep. Tonight, and forever, we choose beauty.
Greer K. Chesher is author of Zion Canyon: A Storied Land and the awardwinning Heart of the Desert Wild: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument as well as numerous other books and articles on the human/natural world.
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