The Valley of Fire ~ Spirit of Place

Open Desert

Entrance to Valley of Fire

Outcrop containing Petroglyph Canyon

Within Petroglyph Canyon

(Second in a series)

Earlier this week I posted on temenos, a sacred, protected place. The Valley of Fire as a whole, and the small secluded cleft called Petroglyph Canyon in particular, are perfect geographical examples.  My adventure to Valley of the Fire State Park, about 40 miles NE of Las Vegas, went through a series of thresholds.  While the goal of the journey was to view the ancient petroglyphs carved into a canyon and see what that encounter might reveal, the experience of getting out into the desert was one of removals.  The stark contrast between the reality that is Vegas and what I found out in the Valley of the Fire could not be greater.  They are opposites in each in every way.

Traffic snarled I-15 for at least fifteen miles.  Then the highway opened up into a broad valley, gradually climbing until a sign marked the apex, and I reconized in that divide the first threshold.  Further along, the exit had a truck stop/casino/reataurant, the kind that dot many exits throughout the west.  A two lane road headed south straight into the desert.  The sign said “Valley of Fire- 18 miles”  Passing that sign was the second threshold.  I was leaving the grid.

I stopped a few times to take photos, touch the sand and smell the sage brush.  The dryness needs to be touched.  I think its the skin alone that gets the harshness.  After another ten miles the road climbed through a rugged outcrop of rocky hills and the road until it reached the entrance to the Valley of Fire, the third threshold.

After the road snaked down into the valley it opened into a wide expanse with Lake Mead visible in the distance.  And off to the northwest, glowing red in the late sun, I viewed the dazzling outcropping, jagged and rough, that contains the Canyon of the Petroglyphs, a forth threshold.

I wound my way to the trail head of the canyon and getting out, crossed the fifth and final threshold.  Immediatly I was struck by another contrast.  The interior of the canyon was smooth and rounded, nothing like the jagged forms that made up the surrounding outcrop.   Walking down the trail, I couldn’t but notice that the scale of this little canyon was about that of a large cathedral.  In the vast expanse of the desert it was both human and intimate.

(note: related reading,  Thresholds of Initiation by Henderson.  Next post in this series, encountering the petroglyphs)