"Oh, the red cruel deathly loveliness of the desert . . . The mute and timeless and implacable and sinister and incredible and heart-troubling mind-stunning canyons of the rich Colorado . . . , silences with glory, soaked in awe . . . A harsh cruel land, stark, naked beauty; terrible and deathly, untamed and untamable, lovelier than any song; a man's country.
"Drugged. I'm drugged, sense and mind, by desert thoughts, canyon thoughts. I've been thinking of the Colorado Plateau . . . Thinking of those great canyons, and of the terrible and grand and unearthly wilderness of rock that surrounds them, my nerves and brain get taut and sharp and hot . . . I've got to go there, be there, live there: it's become an obsession with me, a passion!
Edward Abbey
Photo: Maidenhair fern and red-streaked, thousand-foot-high cliffs of Navajo sandstone, Zion Canyon, Zion National Park, UT; May 27, 2012.
The Virgin River of Zion Canyon is considered a part of the basin of the Colorado River and of the Colorado Plateau.
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