Their images and mystery seep into your dreams. The Buckskin Gulch of the Paria River E ven if the blessings of the sun would reach the bottom, there is no soil to receive them. This tortuous labyrinth of sand-polished stone is the home of shadow and death. It is ever born from scouring flash floods and the inexorable forces of freezing and thawing, grain by grain, shape-changing once again.
Mineral varnish leaches through to paint the surface with lines and swirls of darkness.
Pools in the floor hold their captive water, evaporation an impossibility. The detritus of death is evident in a scattering of feathers in the mud, a rotting coyote, a raven's silent corpse. Light dances on the walls and the rocks glisten as if from inner fire. Oranges and reds intertwine around shadowy projections, swirling like the brushstrokes of some mad artist who does not know the meaning of enough. The glow reflects onto the opposite walls in a more subtle repetition of the same.