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    Bryce Canyon National Park: The Desert's Hoodoo Heart
    Bryce Canyon National Park: The Desert's Hoodoo Heart
    Bryce Canyon National Park: The Desert's Hoodoo Heart
    Ebook74 pages45 minutes

    Bryce Canyon National Park: The Desert's Hoodoo Heart

    By Greer Chesher

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    About this ebook

    Often humorously referred to as:"A hell of a place to lose a cow," Bryce Canyon National Park preserves one of the most astonishing landscapes in the American Southwest. Here the forces of erosion have sculpted a landscape that is among the most unique on all the world. Naturalist-author Greer K. Chesher delights the reader with her examination of this landscape's creation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPark Partners, Inc
    Release dateAug 13, 2010
    ISBN9781580710985
    Bryce Canyon National Park: The Desert's Hoodoo Heart
    Author

    Greer Chesher

    Greer Chesher has been a naturalist since a night almost 40 years ago when her father woke her from deep summer slumbers to watch her first meteor shower. Now, after working 18 years as a National Park Service naturalist and planner in five southwestern parks, she wanders the desert trying to sate an unquenchable curiousity about the natural world. Knowing she will never find all the answers, but enjoying the redrock journey, she and her faithful companion Bo the Adventure Dog live and write from beautiful downtown, Rockville, Utah.

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      Book preview

      Bryce Canyon National Park - Greer Chesher

      BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK

      The Desert’s Hoodoo Heart

      by

      Greer K. Chesher

      *****

      SIERRA PRESS

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2010 Sierra Press

      *****

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      *****

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Many thanks to Paula Henrie, Jim Wilson, and Jeff Nicholas who linked me with this project. Multitudinous thanks to Mimi Eckstein who would not let me sleep until I wrote like she knows I can ((and who doesn’t like the word multitudinous). Thanks to Jan Stock at Bryce Canyon National Park for checking the facts; and to my editor, Nicky Leach, for making it all right. And special thanks to Bo the Adventure Dog, who unleashed me from my computer every evening and took me for a walk.

      *****

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      The Bryce Region

      Bryce Amphitheater

      ATOP THE RIM

      Touring the Park

      The View From Here

      The Geologic Story

      BELOW THE RIM

      Hiking Bryce Canyon

      Human History

      Life Below the Rim

      BEHIND THE RIM

      The Role of Fire

      Prairie Dogs

      FIELD GUIDES

      Birds

      Mammals

      Trees

      Wildflowers

      GRAND STAIRCASE–ESCALANTE NATIONAL MONUMENT

      RESOURCES & INFORMATION

      SUGGESTED READING

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      COMING SOON

      *****

      Late afternoon at Fairyland Canyon

      INTRODUCTION

      It is hot—the sun, blinding. This baked rime of desert wavers in the June heat, and wind pants through the passenger window. The car noses into the immense desert bowl of the San Rafael Swell on our journey to Zion by way of Bryce. I don’t know what possessed my mother and I to do this, to drive cross-country together. It’s been five days of haggling about driving habits (mine), windows (open or shut), the price of gas, and what food to eat.

      But now, coming into this country, we are silenced. Our Michigan eyes brim with the West’s amazement, bowled over by the wide openness of it, the unscreened nakedness. No trees, no lakes; just sky the turquoise of stone and land the terra cotta of jumbled pots.

      As the land rises, my tiny car, having breathed only low-altitude air, chokes and stutters. Outside, pinyon and juniper trot by in this 4,000-foot high desert, at their feet, sea-green sage and white-flowering yucca. My mother, who has never been west of Chicago, is saying she doesn’t think she could live in a place like this. I am on my way to work as a seasonal ranger at Zion National Park, and I am mesmerized.

      Around us plateaus tier in creams, yellows, cinnamons, and maroons, their flat tops forest green, their toes bare. Dry canyons wiggle away from the road like snakes, like lightning. It’s hard to keep my eyes on the road as the land peels to the bone. Sharp ridges jut like elbows; low hills arch like ribs. Cacti, tinged purple, poke from the rusty hardpan, and thin-skinned cows barely turn their heads at our passing. To the south, mountains rise, snow-capped blue sentinels in the burning desert. Signs proclaiming wonders tick by like fence posts—Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Dark Canyon Wilderness Area, The Maze, Capitol Reef National Park, Anasazi Indian Village State Park. It appears we are circumnavigating the redrock heart of the world.

      I ease the car to the roadside and

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