A slab of uplifted rock larger than Italy sits in the center of the American Southwest. It is called the Colorado Plateau, and it is a beautiful place, higher ground in every sense. What little rain falls onto the plateau has helped to inscribe spectacular canyons into its surface. Ice Age mammoth hunters were likely the first human beings to wander among its layered cliff faces and mesas, where the exposed sedimentary rock comes in every color between peach and vermillion. Native Americans liked what they saw, or so it…
