This is not a place for the acrophobic. Sheer walls plunge to sloping skirts of rocky rubble, followed by another flat plain 300 metres below. That level, in turn, is transected by the sinuous gorge of the San Juan River. Sitting alone on the brink of the abyss, I listen to the whispers of wind and wilderness. Canyon wrens below whistle their descending, flute-like scale.
Swallows dive by with a whoosh.
Bees buzz among the blossoms, then alight to wallow in wildflower nectar. But engineers did it a few kilometres away in a highway section called the Moki Dugway. The blacktop stops at the rim. Beyond, a gravel roadbed zigzags downward in a Zorro-like succession of hairpin switchbacks. The ploy works.