The desert is a beautiful and wondrous place. It defies reality, containing life it has no means to support. The sheer ruggedness gives the impression that everything around wants to harm you. But to stay away would mean missing the miracle of survival that comes from a lush canyon oasis. To not see the desert would be to admit disbelief in it's very existence.
That's as close as I can come to describing how I felt on my way to the canyons of Zion National Park. I'd seen pictures, but was still utterly unprepared to drive through the desert and end up in a land of sunset painted rocks and flowers spewing vibrantly from otherwise dead-seeming plant life. The spring snow-melt creek by my tent was a flowing lullaby for two nights while I played at survival in an environment I was otherwise unwelcome. I traipsed around camp free footed knowing the nearby cactus shed spines just as easily as I shed shoes, but still unable to resist the silky fine red sand in my toes.
After awhile I ran out of disbelieving expression and moved from "wow"s to "mmhmmm yeah"s and finally silence when I started to feel redundant. "Where even am I" became a refrain for the weekend. And all this was just from the door of my little tent home. The beauty exploration had just begun. We spent the weekend exploring the park as tourists, climbing up the famously crowded Angel's Landing. We found boulders and ledges and cliffs to stupidly dangle our feet from. We caved to our desire to hide from the hordes of people and ducked down a small foot path off an overlook which took us to icy cold swimming holes. Too cold for us, and too cold for the silly frogs sunning like smooth, spotted stones on the rough sandstone.
I didn't think I could become more appalled by beauty, but the final morning took us down a steep grade into a canyon where we followed a stream for several hours, the cool, red walls getting closer and closer as we went. We zig zagged across the stream over and over again, scoping out crossing paths and hopping stones, regardless ending up with wet socks. When we ran into a series of waterfalls slopping over the red riverbed we gave up and splashed upstream. About the time our toes turned red and numb we rounded a corner face-to-face with the carved out tunnel of nature's Subway. Walls smooth from decades of polishing floods showed even the most delicate veins of layered rock varieties hidden only where the streaked coppers and greens of algae had found their own oasis home complete with a devastating view of desert perfection. "Where even am I"?!?! We splashed and took photos as deep into the almost-tunnel as we could without submerging more than our already painfully cold legs. Rain clouds signaled the end of exploration and gave the bizarre realization that even the element keeping the entire eco system alive was a threat between these tight canyon walls. 
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