We are waiting in Cedar City for our car. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, that’s why I bought a Hyundai. This is not the first time I’ve waited in a small town for work to be done on a car, still, they were fun-but-irritable cars, and it was not an experience I wanted or expected to repeat with a Hyundai. That’s the bad news, the waiting; the good news is the Hyundai is under warranty and the best news is we are guests of an old college friend of Michele’, Kay, and her partner, Robert. In the meanwhile, the Hyundai is at the dealer about 40 miles away, it is three in the afternoon, and it has just started snowing.

Cedar City is at the edge of the Great Basin, behind it – coming from the west – is the Colorado Plateau and within spitting distance are three National Parks, Zion, Brice, and Cedar Breaks, but that is deceptive because there are dozens of places, like Ashdown Gorge, that would be a National Park in any other state. The Colorado Plateau was once was a vast inland sea – known as the Western Interior Seaway – from about 130 to 70 million years ago. When the Farallon Plate dived under the North American Plate, it pushed this seabed up. For about 60 million years, this area had been collecting alluvia that ran down from the proto Rocky Mountain Range to the east and the Nevada Plateau in the west, now it is seven to eight thousand feet higher and eroding. The top of the Colorado Plateau is not much, high dry plains, conventionally beautiful in many areas, but the eroding edges are some of the most spectacular and enchanting places on earth.