Skip to main content

Utah: The Most Beautiful Place on Earth

As we camped in the mountains and hiked in the red rock this past weekend, I occurred to me that Utah is the most beautiful place on earth. I need to stop taking it for granted.


As I was taking in the unsurpassed beauty of Delicate Arch at Arches National Park last Thursday (I have never seen a picture that does justice to the grandeur of actually being there), I heard a man speaking German. Having served an LDS Mission in Austria several years ago, I decided to try out my German on him. During the course of our conversation, my new friend stated that Utah was perhaps the most beautiful place on earth.

I've taken it for granted for the greater part of five decades, but I'm finally coming to the realization that he's right.

Thursday and Friday nights our church group camped high in the La Sal Mountains, while just a half hour to an hour away during the daytime hours we hiked, climbed and four-wheeled Arches, Dead Horse Point, and Canyonlands National Parks.

Just to sit and ponder how these geologic marvels could have come into existence is an exercise in awe. It actually surprises me that some fundamentalists think that even God could have swept a magic stroke of his paintbrush and created even just this much in six 24-hour periods. I have no trouble thinking that the God who created this earth would yet be pleased to allow as much as 300 million years of erosion for His creation to beautify itself.

We've taken our kids to Arches and Mesa Verde earlier this year, we've visited Zion National Park more than once, and we've been to Yellowstone. Next on our list of places is Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, and Bryce.

We are successful if we can pass on to our posterity a healthy respect for the beauties of life.

As my family and I were returning from our family trip there in April, I asked them whether they would like to come back to Arches next year or go to Disneyland.

"Arches!!!" they exclaimed in unison.

I must be doing something right.

Comments

  1. We do have the prettiest and greatest state in the Union.

    My kids haven't expressed any desire to go to Disneyland eiher. However, it might have to do with my general disgust with the institution.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Holy mackerel!

    I was at the delicate arch this past Saturday.

    We camped by Ken's Lake.

    Utah is beautiful! We are blessed.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for commenting. If you have a Google/Blogger account, to be apprised of ongoing comment activity on this article, please click the "Subscribe" link below.

Popular posts from this blog

Red Clothing and Resurrection: Jesus Christ's Second Coming

The scriptures teach that when Christ comes again to the earth, that he will be wearing red apparel. Why red ? They also teach that at Christ's coming, many of the dead will become resurrected. Will this only include members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Not by a long shot, no matter what some Mormon might tell you.

To Have the Compassion of an Ogre

At least when it comes to using government as a weapon of compassion, I have the compassion of the ogre. I will explain below why I think government cannot and should not be in the business of compassion. The force of government has caused many people to show less compassion to their fellow men. On the other hand, some of the best things happen when government is not compassionate. In such circumstances, individuals personally begin to display more compassion. One such instance of this happened recently in Utah when the governor asked the legislature to convene a special session in order to (among other things) provide special monies to pay for dental care for the disabled . If they didn't fund the governor's compassion project, it would make the legislators look even more heartless in a year where the budget surplus was projected to be at least $150 million. In spite of these political odds, the legislature did not grant the $2 million that 40,000 members of the disabled

Hey, Senator Buttars: "Happy Holidays!!"

Utah Senator Chris Buttars may be a well-meaning individual, but his actions often don't come out that way. His latest lament, with accompanying legislation that businesses use the phrase "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays", is at least the third case in point that I am aware of. First, we were entertained by the faux pas made by the Senator in the 2008 Utah Legislative session, when referring to an In reality, America has a Judeo -Christian heritage, so maybe Senator Buttars should change his legislation to "encourage" businesses to advertise with " Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas"...? analogy of a human baby, of declaring that " this baby is black ". Then there was the attempt to help a friend develop his property in Mapleton, Utah, by using the force if his legislative office . Let's see if we can top that... Who cares that businesses hock their Christmas wares by using the term "Happy Holidays"? I