This is an actual photo – not a painting – of bighorn sheep resting on a slickrock outcrop along Zion National Park’s Mount Carmel Highway. But you can hardly be blamed for thinking otherwise.
First, the magnification is zoomed up to my little Kodak’s maximum. Second, the textures, lines, and colors of the Slickrock Country on Zion’s east side are … fanciful, faerie-like. While driving through, I, myself, could hardly believe I was in a real place of this world.
Perhaps Zion National Park isn’t quite of this world after all. Zion, to the Mormons (Latter Day Saints), who gave this region its English name, is a metaphorical as well as real place. It is the ancient city of Enoch, which was taken to Heaven and will return to Earth so that a temple will be built (rebuilding of Solomon’s temple?) during Jesus’ second coming.
I’m probably reading too much into this. It’s fanciful to think that one can walk in a place that straddles the gateway between Heaven and Earth, between the mortal and Faerie. Yet like Kolob Canyons yesterday, I can’t help but feel I’m in the presence of a power or powers greater than myself. The Earth throbs with life, even in each grain of sand. And the Wind whispers with the Sun.
There’s that purple prose coming out of me, like poison in a hot sweat! Well, you come here and see if you don’t feel the same!
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