SPECIAL WARNING: When you make a trip into any canyon in this part of the country, beware of flash floods. Even if the weather is fine where you are, be on the lookout for thunderstorms or heavy rain upstream from your location. If it’s raining upstream, or if great towering clouds are building up, STAY OUT OF THE STREAMBED in the bottom of the canyon. NEVER CAMP in or next to a streambed in this region, even if it is dry. If you get caught by a healthy flash flood, you’re dead.
The following lettered paragraphs are coordinated with numbered stakes along the trail to the viewpoint. They help explain features as you see them. If you are not taking advantage of the different points of view here, turn to [page 16]. (It’s OK to read the trail guide even if you don’t take the walk.)
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A How’s this for a different point of view? It used to be, when people wanted to do what you are doing, that they scrambled out on the rocks, crawled across these logs and climbed down the tree. That was the only way down the cliff. Now you gain access via the stairs, which cost a few thousand of your tax dollars. Your dollars, remember, not just “Government funds.”
Now, some folks say we ruined the trip, that it’s no fun anymore. Others say we should have built wooden stairs, not metal. Some think this is fine and a few want nothing less than an elevator or tram. What do you think?
How does the difficulty of getting to a place affect your feeling for that place? How does it affect your opinion of the people who will not (we don’t mean those who can not) do what you are doing right now?
White Throated Swifts
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B A thousand years ago this summer, a man stood where you now stand and he watched the white throated swifts sweep in and out of cracks in the cliff above you. He didn’t know they were white throated swifts nor did he care. His main interest was to see if any baby birds had fallen from their nests into the pile of manure. Many do, each year, and the occupants of this land used any food they could find.
In that 1,000 years, nearly a thousand generations of swifts have come and gone. Each year they return, nest in the cracks, wing their way through the canyons catching insects, and produce a new generation from the stuff of their environment. A thousand generations have passed; the swifts are still here. There are neither more nor less than the previous owner of the land watched a thousand years ago, and a thousand generations have left the environment ready for a thousand more. What of us—of Man?
Less than 50 generations of man have passed since the day your predecessor watched the birds from this point. Our numbers have increased to many times the number there were then and each of us uses many times as much from our environment.