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Show A Plant Walk on Sipcpu Trai! Is Rewarding SE Utah Experience A walk along the trails of Na Vral Bridges National Monument may be the most reward. r.g of your expe-rien-ces in the Monument. If you chorse the S:papu Trail, you nvgiit notice exciting abrupt ab-rupt changes in tiie plant l.fe abiAit you in the half-mile half-mile walk frm the rim of White Canyon to the base of the S.papu Natural Bridge. As ycu Ii ave your car at the rim to start walking, you g't an overview glimpse of the 5-fect deep light-gray rock canyon you are about to descend into. Perhaps you have stopped at the Sipapu Overlook one-half mile back up the road for a good panoramic pano-ramic prelude. Along the rim of the canyon can-yon and back on the mesa is the extensive dark-green blanket of the pinyon pine-jurrper pine-jurrper forest (pygmy forest for-est L Through offering little shade and water, the forest gives a pleasing, attractive color to the parched tablelands. table-lands. The seeds from the pine coneys of the pinyons have a pleasant sweet taste and serve as a food source for local Indians. Look closely close-ly at the juniper and note their round bluish berries, an important food for many of the birds and wildlife of tiie forests. You may also notice the numerous shrubs, predominantly predom-inantly the sagebrush, the light-green fragrant shrub popularly associated with the dry open country of the American Am-erican West. There is also curlleaf mountain mahogany, or desert mahogany, a dark green narrow-leafed, spiny-looking spiny-looking shrub, valuable as a browsing plant to Wildlife. Descend the trail over smooth sloping sandstone, where these plants grow only in nooks and crannies where the rock has been broken down into pockets of soil. Recently-constructed stairways provide easy access to a wide ledge nestled against a verticle rock wall. Along the ledge grow a stand of tall douglas fir trees. These are the same trees that richly clothe the moist mountainsides mountain-sides of Oregon and Washington. Wash-ington. You may stop and wonder why a forest tree requiring re-quiring much water is growing grow-ing in a dry land like this. The answer lies in the rock. You m;ght have seen places in the sandstone where the rock is red. particularly near the ledges. Whereas the gray sandstone holds home water, the red shales are impervious to it. So, sec-ps appear in the sandstone at the canyon wall near the red beds, thus prob- ably responsible for providing provid-ing the douglas firs with the moist soil they need to grow. To descend from the lodge to the slope below, a sturdy ladder is provided. You car. notice a nearby juniper with its branches hanging over the ledge, its roots lodged in a small coating of soil. Imaine yourself hanging over a lodge, holding onto it by only your logs and feet. We can get an idea of the hardy existence of that juniper. Another .3 mile leads do veaif ope through more pinyons, junipers, desert mahogany, ma-hogany, prieklypear cactus, and many other dry shrubs to the canyon bottom. Two final ladders put ycu on the fioor of the canyon, where ycu stand above the stream bed on a sandy-si:y terrace. Here cottonwocds. gambel oaks, and willcws grow luxuriantly. Cottonwocds. or poplars, effen used as shade trees, require much water, and typically grow near cool s Teams and rivers. A look along this dry stream bed hore reveals spots of mud still loft from the latest intermittent in-termittent flow. The frequent fre-quent short storms that occur oc-cur on the mesas and mountains moun-tains around cause accumulations accum-ulations of water in the canyons can-yons that build up into temporary tem-porary stream flows, sometimes some-times so harsh as to be flash floods. Thus, the soil of the canyon btic-m is frequently replenished with the water the bottom plants need. Relax under the shade of one of the eottonwoods ar.d gaze straight up 250 feet to the bridge of stone spanning span-ning the canyon above you. Listen to the gentle rustle ol the leaves as you stare at the great silent span. It is then hard to appreciate that this peaceful wndrous spot is actually the scene of continual con-tinual breaking down of solid sol-id rextk. and that the plants about you exist for but an instant as the canyon continues contin-ues to change with time. |