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Published: April 22nd 2008
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With every step on the loose sandy path among the massive red rock formations, I felt a virtual time counter moving back ever faster through the centuries and then the millennia until a time during the Mesozoic era, at the end of the Jurassic period, 150 Million years ago when everything in my surroundings was at the bottom of an inland sea.
Even at the present time, the Valley of Fire feels like an alien environment, but when this place was at the bottom of this ancient sea, Earth was a different world altogether. Many animal and plant species that ultimately failed to adapt to one of the many environmental changes that our planet was to experience lived in this sea or on the ground close to its coastline during this period.
It was sobering to think that at the time, most of these ultimately-doomed species had already been much more successful than humans have been so far and had managed to maintain continuous gene lineages over millions of years, an achievement that humans may not ever get the opportunity to do in the same time scale.
Natural history aside, the valley’s alien beauty inevitably connects with your
most primitive consciousness and lets you forget, at least for a moment, about any mundane matters. You are immediately synchronized with a more primordial rhythm; one that is well beyond the interests and control of any single species.
Because of its inspiring landscapes, “Rainbow Vista” proved to be a perfect selection as the first place to visit in this amazing state park. I made it there in about one and a half hours by car after landing in Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport on a flight from Atlanta.
Upon me again is the time of the year when I attend the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference. This is my busiest work period of the year and also the time when I “escape” into the Southwestern United States desert lands ahead of the big event. I feel like it was yesterday when I was writing about my visit to
Mount Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks with one of my colleagues a year ago… I guess time really does fly when you are having fun!
This year’s small break has to give me the physical and emotional strength to work seventeen-hour days during the seven days following this coming Thursday and including the
weekend... This time, as one of the speakers at the conference, my schedule in Las Vegas will be much more insane!
Valley of Fire was the first of Nevada’s state parks created by this state in 1935. Named after the very vivid red hue of its rock formations, the park’s unusual features are the result of a long string of geologic events that started when the inland sea lost its water and left behind shifting sand dunes. The sand dunes eventually petrified as additional sediment layers formed over them. Plate tectonics, faulting, and other geological events caused some of these layers to break, shift and protrude, creating the present-time rock formations. Iron oxides present in the ancient sand dunes give these rocks its distinctive red coloration. In some locations in the valley, the red rocks contrast with white silica formations that have totally different origin and composition.
Because of its relative proximity to Las Vegas, I was very surprised to find this gem when I was researching potential places to visit this year. Valley of Fire State Park is less than 90 miles away from downtown Las Vegas if you get there via Interstate 15 Highway - the
fastest though not necessarily the most scenic way to reach the park. An alternate way is by approaching the area via Lake Meade Boulevard from Las Vegas and then turn north on State Highway 169 around Lake Meade. Highway 169 junctions with Valley of Fire highway and approaches the park from the east. This route is much more scenic but it takes much longer to go through. My plan is to use this route in my way back to town.
As I visited other places within the park, I continued to wonder about the infinitely short time that I was experiencing in a place that has existed in so many different natural and extreme forms since the beginning of time on Earth. Valley of Fire is not only an evolving real world environment, but also, thanks to human imagination, the site has doubled as many different virtual worlds…
Valley of Fire is the place where Admiral James Tiberius Kirk found his demise in Star Trek Generations after he and Captain Jean-Luc Picard tried to stop a madman from destroying the planet’s star in order to reach the Nexus (a kind of Paradise). The madman’s plans were going to
Rock Formation
At Rainbow Vista have an enormous cost for the inhabitants of an entire neighboring world. Valley of Fire doubled also as Mars in Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, where his character restores a breathable atmosphere to the planet after defeating an evil and corrupt corporation that was profiting from the sale of breathable air to the inhabitants of a colony in the planet.
From strictly a human experience, there is archeological evidence that early humans in the area visited Valley of Fire as long ago as 10,000 BC. These early visitors left haunting expressions of their art in the form of petroglyphs that even today try to communicate a message that can no longer be understood. Will our technological achievements become as cryptic to understand to visitors in the far future as these petroglyphs are to us?
Everything will depend on our deepening understanding, as a species and as individuals that our long-term survival depends on our ability to exist in harmony with the natural world and with each other… Our species’ increasingly developed self-awareness and intelligence can be a tremendous survival advantage or become our downfall by making us comfortable with the dangerous and false belief that we are above
(and exempt from) the natural laws of the universe, irrelevant on whether you believe that these laws are self-deterministic or imposed by a Higher Power.
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Sergio
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Pics
Great pics, Dad! "Medusa's shadow" is very artistic! Can you take your sons next time?