–I heard the sun and waked up!–
(Caleb-3)

The Stansbury mountain range is a succession of high peaks, some above 10,000 feet, each a lighter hue of gray proportionate to its distance.  In the moments before sunrise, the clouds and sky form a sea of swirling scarlet, orange, red, and pink.  The western face of the Oquirrh range once boasted thick pine forests.  But over-harvesting, together with decades of settling particulate pollution from the now-defunct Anaconda smelter, denuded the mountain slopes of their forests.  They now show mostly fault-fractured bedrock.  With the smelter gone, the trees are slowly returning, starting from deep within the canyons and creeping back onto the slopes. Continue reading →