A Glimpse of Zion

A quick snap-shot taken during a walk in Zion National Park.  If you've not been there, I certainly recommend going.  If you're not into crowds, however, you'll need to brace yourself a bit.  Getting past the pavement is difficult.  I'm not kidding.  We actually stopped a ranger and asked if there are any unpaved trails in the main shuttle area.  Her answer was a bit disconcerting.
How do you find wilderness and connect with nature if you are unable to leave civilization?  How do you make a decent unique photograph of an area overrun with tourists and photographers?  The answer to both questions is often multi-layered, as layered as the desert itself.
After a few days of digging around and trying to push out of the bottleneck, we became completely lost in the possibilities of this place.  We will be going back to Zion, but not because of anything we did while we were there.  Because of the things we might do, because of the stories we made up about what's around the next bend.  That's the closest I've come to describing what "hope" feels like.  Any place that allows this kind of mental transformation in a curmudgeon like myself, is worth putting on the short list of places to return.