We had a wonderful and thoughtful two weeks exploring the National Parks in Arizona and Utah. I came away with about a thousand photos – 147 of which are posted here – and a couple of impressions.
My first impression from the trip is that the diversity of our country – in climate, geography, and people – is impossibly large. Perhaps unmanageably large, in our present political climate.
I cannot imagine living in the middle of a desert where my “next door” neighbor is 5+ miles away, or where my commute to the grocery store is a 30 to 45 minute drive. But I can now better understand why some people in this part of the world can’t wrap their brains around the concept of a “row house”. Perspective is everything, and travel absolutely enlarges that.
My second impression is that Native Americans got a really bad deal when our government moved into the neighborhood and took over their lands. The so-called “reservations” we saw looked to be pretty grim landscapes of poverty. And the Heard Museum of Native American Culture in Phoenix was a real eye-opener. The Carlisle Indian School in my native state of Pennsylvania was but the tip of the iceberg that was the debacle of Native American “resettlement”.
Here is my collection of “curated” photos from the trip: