Rock of ages: in canyon country, the depths of time arc laid bare.(Colorado Plateau)

In the outback regions of the Colorado Plateau, time stands nearly still. Year by year, erosion lightly planes the mesas and deepens the canyons; a wet year thickens the sparse grasses and a dry year withers them. But the sea of painted rock covering vast stretches of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado remains much as it was before the pioneers, before the Spanish conquistadores, before the first immigrants to the New World.

Shift your timescale from the human to the geologic, though, and the story of these corrugated rockscapes isn't scant change but vast change, ...

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