On the Arizona/Utah Border
By Michael Krajnak
Photograph by Max Koepke
The Arizona/Utah border is a lonely place, a desolate place, a vast landscape of rock and sand and rising cliffs, and windswept juniper and lingering sunsets, a place that beckons the adventurous ones. This is where I go to lose myself and to find myself.
So, I begin early one May morning by walking up a shallow, sinuous sandstone canyon on my way to one of the most outstanding natural areas in the Southwest. The hike climbs over sand dunes, winds around steeply pitched slick rock and ends at “The Wave”, a wondrous cove of stone with a kaleidoscope of color. The rock appears as frozen ripples of windswept sand dunes. Words are insufficient to fully describe the experience of this beautiful place.
I hope that we don’t love it death, like we’ve done with Phoenix and Vegas and Los Angeles and all the rest. I wonder what it will be like one hundred years from now. I wonder if we can stop ourselves from developing every inch of this continent in the name of progress. I wonder if we can stop loving a profit and start loving the planet. I retrace my steps to the trailhead and crawl into my sleeping bag with the stars as my only companions.
Michael Krajnak
928-284-1816
walkingman@sedona.net
www.southwestoutside.com