Through Garden of the Gods

Rolling between orange monoliths, Garden of the Gods is a passage. 

Entrance and exit become one in the same. 

Time and place become more distant. 

One look at the surrounding sizes and shapes and it’s easy to see why there is a spiritual connection here.

For Apache, Comanche and Lakota native peoples, for pioneers of the early American West and for the number of tourists like myself just driving through, there is serenity and humility in the face of the chaotic balance of boulder, tree and sand. 

Across the expanse of the park the land rises and falls, crests and troughs like the fin or backbone of some great underwater beast breaking the surface. 

Towers of crimson rock, shields of scarlet stone and amber-colored giants seem to guard the park as if protecting the lost garden of Eden. 

Delicate and strong, each massive upheaval reaches higher to the heavens, upward in a series of red spires that resemble something more Martian that Earthen.

Standing in the shade of the formations demands presence—a sacrifice of sorts.

Garden of the Gods asks that we forget about the caravans of cars and guided tour groups. It asks that we remove our world from the one before us. 

Place your hand on one of the ancient stones. You can feel the magnitude of the Garden coming through the matter.

Weave through the formations on foot, and the sky screams blue against the surrounding bright orange.

It’s easy to forget where you are or how you came to this place.

Staring at the monuments is a stare into the face of a mystery that bests us by millions of years, a place older than ourselves, than our species for that matter.

We enter wide-eyed into a place that looks like another world, only to leave with the realization that this world is in fact our own. 

I can’t help but feel that the land here is a gateway to something greater, and we are privileged enough to pass through.