A Sense of Place

[Published in the Journal of the Santa Fe Writers Project - http://www.sfwp.com/a-sense-of-place-by-richard-little/ ]

A Sense of Place:  Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

    …round apples glowing red in the orchard and the rustle of the leaves make me pause to think how many other than human forces affect us . . . . I respond - how?

        Virginia Woolf - "A Sketch of the Past"

   

 

            There has to be an end to this hellish descent. Six miles so far in first gear over washboards and gullies, sometimes careening, then skidding to a stop and sending a cloud of dust and rocks over into an abyss.  Next, an open stretch across a bench several acres wide.  Maybe there will be an easy down grade from now on, but no, the road narrows and plunges into a funnel yet again, and the creeping and tumbling and inching down begins anew.  My uncomplaining truck clutches and shifts and brakes and wants to test its tipping point, so on we go.

 

            The worst patch of impossible road I can recall, and another six or seven miles to go and another thousand feet down.  I’m in northwest Colorado – Dinosaur National Monument -- high on the Uinta plateau above the confluence of the Yampa and Green Rivers.  I was told this would be worth it, a descent into Echo Park, the Center of the Universe; that the veil between earthbound reality and the eternal world of spiritual truth is thinner there than anywhere.