the cat you don't pet

how the school house rocks

I am always amazed at the amount of education that a road trip has to offer. Especially those that take us down dotted red lines crisscrossing Utah's West Desert. 

Topaz Mt.

Mineralogy, geology, geography, botany, and ecology. 

Chemistry and physics.

Geological thermal heating, wind and solar energy.

Baker Hot Springs

History, economics, culture, and acute viral nasopharyngitis. 

Delta, Utah  

Avian migration and art.

Sevier Lake Bed

Death Canyon

Land management and habitat preservation. 

Navigation, vertebrate & invertebrate morphology.

 Smelting, mining, aquifers, and irrigation. 

 Geological time and formations. Elevations and climate.

Notch Peak

Wheeler Amphitheater 

(Cambrian wheeler shale deposit) 

Paleontology and ancient history.

And of course, a tiny bit of reading.

The House Range, Millard County, Utah

Part of me feels like the desert doesn't need an explanation.  It simply is the desert, with all its obvious questions. Fields of hot water. Lakes of salt. Knolls of wild horses. 

Hills of wheeler shale that make you feel like you have stumbled across the aftermath of a mad tea party. Trees that talk in the wind. It is impossible not to love here.

To walk the desert is to walk across time.