This is a blog I wrote when I rode a bicycle across the country… I am moving it here from cycling4acause.org to preserve it in a single location! Enjoy! xxop
zion witnesses its billionth sunset
jane and eric in admiration
riding over the foot bridge
opee gives a chicago salute to zion.
pete eich roars through a rock tunnel
zion national park welcomes us
October 27, 2008
“I was dumbstruck by the towering power of it’s Geology… multicolored features sculpted into the most magical rock kingdom I have ever seen… a place drawn by God’s own hand.” -Robert Redford.
To name a place Zion, would be to have some huge shoes to fill. For thousands of years the place of Zion in Palestine was meant to have both a geographic and spiritual significance so profound that peoples all throughout history in Christendom, Islam, Judaism and many more have made pilgrimage to such a holy place. In Hebrew it means highest place and refers to both a physical and spiritual sense. When European settlers came west and first laid eyes on the incredible structures and formations of southern Utah, it is no wonder such a place would come to be known as the Zion. To even attempt to express such a place with words or photographs would be impossible. It is not a place bound by words nor a place to be captured by mere two dimensions. It is a structure so painstakingly intricate and so monumentally extraordinary that one can only contemplate it’s massive age and creation with humbled thoughts. The team spent hours hiking along its ancient ridges and merely trying to admire its spectrum of color. In the end, it was Zion that most astounded the group and allowed them the time to rejuvenate. Camping underneath the towering canyons and awaiting dawn’s first light in the deep valley floor made them all convinced it was the most incredible place they have ever seen.
olin patterson makes a pilgrimage to the other zion in the middle east earlier this year
