Vers les cuivres de Capitol Reef
Fragile élégance, Landscape Arch à Moab
Monument Valley et l'ombre de John Ford
Vers les cuivres de Capitol Reef
Some great parks,
Southwest America
from August 23 to September 7, 2018
It needed that all the myths of the vast desert landscapes, the endless straight roads, the sumptuous canyons materialize de visu.
The potential for visites was considerable for this vast region around the very long valley of the "colored river", Colorado.
To the point that it was necessary to limit the perimeter covered : Las Vegas was the starting and final point of our loop to the west, and Moab its easternmost limit.
In fact, reality has lyrically surpassed all bookish or cinematographic a priori.
The sensations of immensity, burning and dry heat (in this season), of total isolation were immediate after leaving Las Vegas.
Our valiant and modern Toyota Corolla has travelled more than 3,000 km, in temperatures that peaked at 43 ° C. With comfort of air conditioning and automatic transmission.
The extreme hardness of the climate, the drought, the remoteness of the ocean, at an intermediate altitude between 1500 and 3000 meters have shaped the lives of Native Americans from the beginning. Their ability to adapt to this environment was a obligation of survival, which is also at the origin of their spirituality.
Yet the surrounding high mountain ranges are not stingy with streams ("creeks") and rivers, often thin, dried up, then violently swelled by the impetuosity of seasonal storms.
All converge, forcing incredibly tortuous passages, towards the great Colorado, and bring along their bed a green breath, real oases on western fashion, in the middle of nowhere.
The pioneer conquerors from Europe first bears the brunt of this hostile context, victims of their faith in their capacity to conquer or to subdue this nature in vain.
Then they did it differently (examples: Lakes Powell and Mead), especially with the Mormons ubiquitous here.
The long strip of bitumen, most often single-track, cut straight for miles, hug the slopes, bounces slowly, barely twists to circumvent the relief, is bordered by long distant steep massifs.
Then sometimes it rocks to a lower plateau through a window cut in the rock that the man has arranged for his passage.
Suddenly the dramaturgy of the landscape reveals other horizons, other reliefs.
Still the same in their vast monotony, suddenly different: a long and slow train in the distance, an immense valley-plateau which seems to wait in vain for the the roar of bison hooves, an inland sea almost adorned with ash and silver.
The sky above is intense purity, stretches clouds or threatens and darkens, falls down far away in black and heavy curtains a passing rain.
Spontaneously, it sometimes happens that at the turn of a massif, at the exit of a parade, after crossing a ridge, we are happy to exclaim in surprise, almost emotion.
The infinite tones of ochres become embedded of silvery strata, the blue-green of an iron or copper ore, is capped with white cones, crushed by the furnace.
The tanned copper cliffs turn purple. An isolated black woodpecker, a high hillock in a long pyramid, emerges on a lookout dreary plateau, sacred and ancestral totems or simply landmarks, ... and lairs.
Eroded landforms form an immense soft cap, rocks perched on improbable supports remain in balance that we believe unstable, yet there for centuries. A natural arch makes a very big wink along the road.
But above all, sumptuous splendours are hidden under the almost boring horizon of trays.
They do not reveal themselves until we reach the edge of a precipice, or in the mazes of a narrow defile. And there, the spectacle is unheard of in its splendor and its diversity.
Thus the majestic silence of immense canyons seizes the spectator. the gaze gets lost, clings to the jagged ridges of level mountains, to other dark lower canyons, lets go to dizzying depths, runs like a mustang Savage in flat and deep spaces, barely grassy.
The panoramas are said to be “breathtaking”.
Abusive translation of admiration, silence not of the excess of dimensions, the extraordinary harmony of colors. Above all the impression is that of a fixed, unchanging power.
The slow passage of the clouds, a soaring eagle, the inclination of the sun: life is good there, tenuous, intense, discreet.
No human work can equal such spectacles, dictates to us our intimate conviction.
Believers will see the divine hand in it.
However, it is only a question of the conjunction of terrestrial physicochemical factors, geological, the effect of which spanned several hundred million years.
If the excess is that of space and dimensions, She is first that of a duration inaccessible to man and his understanding.
A dazzling paradox, it is in the instant that he contemplates the prodigious result .
Short bibliography
Besides Google Earth, Google Maps, Wikipedia, and the information panels of the Parks are often quite educational :
- for the Kaiparowits fossils on route 12
http://www.lakepowell.net/sciencecenter/kaiparowits.htm
- about the artificial lakes Mead and Powel, in the newspaper "Arizona Republic" of 08/28/2018, "At water-starved Lake Mead and Lake Powell, 'the crisis is already real,' scientists say"
- about the Navajo and the Navajo Nation, as well as the Native Americans of the region:
http://cocomagnanville.over-blog.com/article-les-navajos-ou-dineh-99799323.html
https://www.arizona-dream.com/usa/amerindiens/tribus/navajos.php
https://voyage.blogs.la-croix.com/arizona-5-la-vraie-vie-des-navajos/2015/05/14/
http://www.peuplesamerindiens.com/pages/amerindiens-des-usa/les-navajos.html
https://ens-religions.formiris.org/userfiles/files/er_491_1.pdf
- about the Mount Carmel tunnel before Zion Park, the magazine "Popular Mechanics" from 1930, p. 926 and following
- about the "Hole-in-the-Rock" expedition
https://www.nps.gov/glca/learn/historyculture/holeintherock.htm
- about the geological formation of the Colorado Plateau
http://planet-terre.ens-lyon.fr/image-de-la-semaine/Img608-2018-06-11.xml