Hymnals in Stone

Cedar Breaks its colors shimmering in the sunlight dazzle your eyes. Here an artist counted sixty colors in this giant paint pot. One of the portals to paradise in southern Utah.

WHEN the engineers threw that hard arm of steel and concrete across Marble Canyon they not only created the highest bridge in the world, but they succeeded in joining in a few months what the Grand Canyon had taken a good many millions of years to put asunder. Thus was tethered miracle to miracle, and wonders were compounded.

If you could think of yourself as something colossal in the old pre-Hollywood sense, if you could cover twenty miles or so at a stride, you might see the way into Arizona from the Northeast down to the Marble Canyon bridge as a system of widesweeping terraces leading down to the rim of the Grand Canyon. It is like the approach to some vast and beautiful estate, the path leading down a wide, irregular stairway laid of bright-colored stones separated by grassy levels. You descend and descend and without knowing where stairway ends and garden begins-you are in Arizona.

Here in one system is a great tumbled paradise which is at the same time the biography of the earth spread out as simply, vividly and complete as such a complicated story could be. From the marble depths of the Grand Canyon to the lava-fudged layers of the Markagunt-Paunsagunt plateaus the rising steps of the Giant Stairway mark the succeeding chapters in Earth's story of a billion years. Differences in elevation give differences in climate, animals and plant life. So with the march upward of the terraces march the flora and fauna of hot desert regions in the bottom of the Grand Canyon-to cool, subarctic regions at the top of Blowhard Mountain on the Markagunt-Paunsagunt plateaus the rising steps of the Giant Stairway mark the succeeding chapters in Earth's story of a billion years. Differences in elevation give differences in climate, animals and plant life. So with the march upward of the terraces march the flora and fauna of hot desert regions in the bottom of the Grand Canyon-to cool, subarctic regions at thetop of Blowhard Mountain on the Markagunt. From the yucca, ocotillo and horned toad, we rise to the regions of the grassy meadows, tall pines, spruce, quaking aspen, indigo lakes; with a thousand variations of climate and living things in between.

It is this fascinating story of the Earth's past and the quick transition of its present that brings such eminent scientists as Dr. H. E. Gregory, geologist, to this region year after year to study.

The earth was not content to set down her story on one large scroll, she must illuminate it and furnish portraits of herself in every conceivable mood. Elsewhere she was content to cover herself modestly with rolling, forested hills, green prairies, high but dignified mountains, wide oceans. Here she has torn away all but a few shreds of the green cloak of modesty. Here, as if struck with a mood of sudden violent passion, she has thrown off veil, At Cedar Breaks your mind is dazed by distances falling away and stretching below and yonder.robes, prudence, to reveal herself in the contortions of a fierce, whirling, drunken dance as if she were under the spell of an aphrodisiac. Some will stare at this naked, beautiful revelation in dismay, as at something beyond understanding; some will go away afraid; some will sit down and write post-cards home.

To others is given love, a kind of sublime lust for the bewitching beauty of it; but they must finally go in the smoke of their own little fires. For it is all beyond them, beyond all of them; as unattainable as a true knowledge of her billion years.

Cedar Breaks on the west side of the Markagunt is the first sight one has here of the earthside with its green drapery torn away. Forty miles eastward the slopes of the Paunsagunt have likewise been despoiled by erosion, to make Bryce Canyon. These two beauty spots are in no wise From the Grand Canyon in Arizona to the Markagunt-Paunsagunt plateaus in Southern Utah the rising steps of the Giant Stairway mark the succeeding chapters in Earth's story of a billion years.

Bryce Canyon, Utah . . . You should find something here to store away with your experiences of birth, love, death and marriage. From above . . . the whole thing appears as a maze of chess-pieces swimming in transparent color of red and pink pastel.

similar, except in the lavishness of their color.

Trouble with Cedar Breaks, as with the rest of the Giant Stairway, is that the immensity of it puts it beyond the scope of the human mind. Its colors shimmering in the sunlight dazzle your eyes; but more, your mind is dazed by the distances falling away and stretching out below and yonder. There are tall pines straggling down the steep slopes, but they are dwarfed by space till they look like slender stems in a glass-bowl garden.

It is said that an artist has counted sixty colors in this giant paintpot. That was not allowing for changes of lighting, a constant shifting of tones from moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day, season to season, year to year, age to age. Not unlike a prism burning in the wind and breaking the sunlight into rapidly shifting color patterns, it has something to do with the ever-varying quality of the atmosphere itself, the slant of the sun's rays, the moisture or lack of it in cliff and talus-the mists, dusts, clouds, storms, snows, rains. It has something to do with the quality of the mind which sees. One may see it as a blur of immensity and color. Another with a mind of deep focus, like a lense fine-ground and sensitive, may find depth and breadth and fluidity in the tonal values, the massive, delicate, myriad forms.

The Fairy Castle in Bryce Canyon . . . there is no end to the images of what man is and what man has done in this portal to paradise. From below, the forms stand out like individual monstrosities.

mind pulls it all down to dimensions that make its forms seem trivial. The odd, the grotesque, the mimicry of human forms and architecture all that is lost when you see it from above, and the whole thing appears as a maze of chess-pieces swimming in transparent color of red and pink pastel. The miracle of that color is like neon so that even the shadows of objects glow with a pink luminescence. You explain it.

When you go down the trails leading into the maze, these forms begin to stand out as individual monstrosities. Talk about Queen Victoria, Wall of Windows, Cathedrals, Three Monks there is no end to the images of what man is and what man has done. And, strangely, Nature has thought up a million contours of her own. Here she is in a mood of caprice, buffoonery. She pokes fun at human shapes, imitates with loud mirth and coarse burlesque the things we hold in reverence, does it with such profuse At Bryce's, too, your impression is liable to depend on the season, the time of day, as well as where and when you slept last night and what you had for breakfast. Given a clear mind free of alcoholic fumes or worry, given a sunlit morning with gathering clouds, you should find something here to store away with your experiences of birth, love, death and marriage. Bryce is like nothing you will ever see again.

Here, as at Cedar Breaks, your mind must be in focus, sensitive to light, color, shadow patterns and above all, nuances of form. See this thing hurriedly or with mind preoccupied and it will appear as just a colossal error on the part of the Canyon Makers. Yes, you will say, they made cliffs, but not tremendous ones as at Zion; they made a wide expanse of canyon, but they cluttered it up with strange objects so that you can't tell whether it is a mile or ten miles from rim to rim. But it is ten miles or more, when you see the whole stretch. Yet it looks, when you let your eyes rest on it for too long a time, as if you could hold it all in the palm of your hand. You can get no clear and definite impression of Bryce from the upper rims. Seeing it whole, your If the towering shapeless forms were given the power to speak, sing, and dance what a thunderous rumbling would roll among the heights.

Zion Canyon from an opening in Mt. Carmel Tunnel . . . an entrancing view at another of Southern Utah's portals to paradise.

A tottering, lurching waltz of giants would ensue.

At any moment you expect a thing like that to happen. When it does not, and you come back out safe and almost sane and ready for a normal human bed with common dreams, you feel that someway you must have escaped in the nick of time. And maybe you did.

Before you go down off the MarkaguntPaunsagunt and hie off toward Zion it will add much to your book of life if you drive out to Strawberry Point. There, spread out below you is certainly one of the noblest panoramas of cliff and canyon and mountain it is given man to see. Here is the second level in your Giant Stairway. On the west is the Plateau called by the Mormons Kolob because it is next to the throne of God. Southward and far yonder to the brink of the Vermilion Cliffs is the Tumurruguaitsigaip Tuweap, or Land of the Rockrovers. Here the braves and maidens of the Shivwit, Piute, Uinkaret Out of the bottomless somewhere rise walls of streaming color that rise and rise and rise as though the earth were stretching apart; then finally at their summits you catch sight of clouds or a sky of dark blue tinsel.

The Mountain of Mystery at Zion

colors run from deep mahogany through all the shades of red and crowned with bluish white.

And Kaivava tribes go when they die and play among the bright carnival of domes, mounds, towers and deep canyons, ride the swift deer and bathe in the aspen-shaded lakes.

Deep in this terrace are canyons of surpassing beauty which few of us have ever seen, only because the region is so rich with color and grandeur we had to concentrate on one portion of it which happened to be the most accessible, Zion Canyon.

Zion is enough. If you never should see another canyon a full knowledge of Zion would give you some claim to immortality.

It is said that when Brigham Young sent the Saints down into the valley of the Virgin River to grow cotton in its warm climate they were close under the cliffs of the canyons the Indians called Mukuntuweap but they had no time to explore the beauties about them. They must grow and pick and spin and weave the cotton into cloth for the people of the New Zion. When one of them happened into the canyon of Mukun-tuweap and brought back a respectful tale of its magnificence, they scoffed at him a little and called it Joseph's Glory (for it was John Black who told them). He insisted that it was firer than any temples man could build, even in Salt Lake City. So he named it Little Zion. A few years later Brigham Young came down to visit the Virgin River settlement, and incidentally he was told of the Canyon. He was told also of two or three men who lived in it, men who were in temporary disrepute in the Church. When he heard of them, and that they called it Little Zion, he shook his head and said, "No, it is not Zion." And for a long time the canyon was known as Not Zion.

tuweap and brought back a respectful tale of its magnificence, they scoffed at him a little and called it Joseph's Glory (for it was John Black who told them). He insisted that it was firer than any temples man could build, even in Salt Lake City. So he named it Little Zion. A few years later Brigham Young came down to visit the Virgin River settlement, and incidentally he was told of the Canyon. He was told also of two or three men who lived in it, men who were in temporary disrepute in the Church. When he heard of them, and that they called it Little Zion, he shook his head and said, "No, it is not Zion." And for a long time the canyon was known as Not Zion.

You will see the Mormon farms hugging the banks of the little river, farms so small the pioneers laughingly called them "bread baskets." For years the settlers lived here undisturbed, making a life and culture of their own. It was a simple, elemental way of days made up of drying hay, hoeing corn, picking fruit and cotton, making the wine for sacrament. Not so much aware of the flashing cliffs that sprang into the clouds above them as of the frag-rance of blossoms, lucerne, lilacs, roses and the ripening berries and fruits, they kept their feet in the red soil and on Sundays let (Turn to Page 40) A fine modern highway through solid rock . . . the Mt. Carmel Tunnel . . . brings you from the East to Zion.