“Above it lies Arches, a redrock wonderland hidden atop a plateau, concealing towers, fins, narrow defiles, and thousands of eyeholes in the stone, peering over the jumbled jungle of rocky millennia. Across the valley, there is the purling and tilt of Behind-the-Rocks. Southward, slowly lifting out of the valley, a sharp horizon line hides secrets. Pushing to its edges, atop the Wingate cliffs, one finds a million-acre bowl full of erosional ecstasies below. The Green and Colorado Rivers, along with their supporting cast of streams and ephemeral arroyos, have etched a topography of patience and persistence, an ordered chaos of canyons, spires, buttes and benches.”

—excerpted from Blow Sand in His Soul: Bates Wilson, the Heart of Canyonlands, 2014—