Capitol Reef National Park - The Land Today

The ensuring 150 million years have seen the same story enacted over and over, oceans giving way to tidal flats, then to marshy lands, and finally to sandy worlds that were drowned beneath new oceans. The frozen waves that crest above the eastern slope's pale Navajo bedrock are not so easily read as are the thick pages of the western cliffs, but to a practiced eye the repetitive saga is clear. The dark, sharp ridges of the Carmel Formation were the bed of a sea that covered the Navajo desert. The broad expanse of dark red Entrada Sandstone is a legacy of the same sea's gradual filling in. The arches of Arches National Park were carved from this Entrada Sandstone, as were the "cathedrals" in Capitol Reef's Cathedral Valley, monoliths up to 500 feet high, harmonious and symmetrical. They exist because they are capped by the firm Curtis Formation: gray sandstone from the bed of yet another sea.

And so it went. The chocolate-colored Summerville Formation, reminiscent of the tide-rippled Moenkopi, was left by this later sea's retreat. The soft Morrison Formation, its pale green and reddish gray bespeaking a swampy landscape, erodes into badlands. The Dakota Sandstone, studded with oyster shells, was the advancing beach of the area's last sea. The dark gray, almost black Mancos Shale was its bed, dense with stagnation. A large sandy spit of land became the flat-topped hills of the solid Mesa Verde sandstones.

Today, Capitol Reef is again desert. High plateaus to the west capture moisture, leaving only thunderstorms to rage and briefly flood the land. Then, walls of water roar down ravines, and blood-red cascades thunder over thousand-foot cliffs. But generally, cottonwoods, box elders, and willows must find the moisture they need along trickly streams and even in dry washes. Pioneers looked for cottonwoods to tell them water was at hand; the leaves seem to point to the sand and say: "Water is here, but you must dig for it."

Along the dry beds of intermittent streams, the loud quacking of a duck is sometimes heard where no duck lives. The big, raucous sound comes from the small throat of a canyon treefrog, more often heard than seen. Its toes equipped with sticky pads, the little green-spotted acrobat climbs out on branches to wait for flying insects. Leaping, it can catch one in midair, turn, and land securely on any surface, even upside down.

Across the open desert pungent sagebrush grows. Gnarled junipers endure, and pinyon pines bear nuts that draw scolding flocks of blue pinyon jays. Hummingbirds hand before tall spikes of brilliant scarlet bugler blossoms, sipping nectar through their long beaks. Waxy sego lilies rise from the desert sands, their large white petals often tinged with color. From canyons comes the most lyrical sound of the Colorado Plateau, the canyon wren's 8 to 14 descending notes: tee-u, tee-u, tee-u, tew, tew, tew, tew, tew...

At night, the poisonous datura, or jimsonweed, offers up its white, sweet-scented flowers to the moon. (Its foliage, however, smells like a wet dog.) Great horned owls spread their wings, and ringtail cats leave their rocky dens in search of prey. Although it moves with feline grace, the agile ringtail is not a cat, but a close cousin to raccoons. The family resemblance is clearly seen in the dark mask across its foxlike face and the bands on its long, bushy tail.

To this harsh land, in the early 1880's, Mormons came. Along the Fremont River, near the then unnamed Cohab Canyon, they founded a village, which they called Fruita for the orchards they planted. The Mormons have long since gone, but the orchards remain and still bear fruit. Here, red-winged blackbirds send lingering calls across a meadow. And at sunset, when the hint of a cool breeze stirs the cottonwood leaves and a full moon begins to glow upon the Navajo domes, you can feel the promise of yet another, softer world again aborning.