Bristlecone Pines and Things Remembered

There are several places that house the ancient bristlecone pine. The spot that inspired the name and theme for this site was along the Bristlecone Pine Trail on the Markagunt Plateau off of Hwy 14 near Cedar City, Utah. It's an extremely accessible place, but it offers the feeling of seclusion as a short trail winds through a pine forest and ends at a cliff, where the bristlecone pines have clung to the ground for millenia, overlooking Zion National Park. For me it has the distinct feeling of something familiar and forgotten at the same time.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

William Wordsworth,
"Ode -- Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

Under the Shadow of Red Rock

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

--T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland


These are taken from our hike through the Peekaboo Loop and Queen's Garden in August 2005. We started at Bryce Point at the trailhead for Peakaboo and began our descent. A mile later, we came to the fork for the Peekaboo Loop, where we took a left so that we could approach the Wall of Windows from the best view (this side is 1.7 miles). Because of heavy rain and snow, Wall Street was closed, but we took a detour to catch a glimpse of the tall, narrow canyons there (.5 mile). We continued on to Queens Garden (1 mile), and from there made our ascent to Sunrise Point (.8 mile).