Parowan Gap

  While much of the state is on Spring Break this week, we are already finished with ours.  We spent a few days in Southern Utah to pass the time - and it was great!  

A few days before we left, I read in the newspaper (yep - still a newspaper reader) about an equinox event at the Parowan Gap.  Anybody ever heard of the Parowan Gap?  I had not, but I knew Parowan was on the way to St. George, so I thought it would be fun to stop and check it out.  I'm so glad we did, especially when I look back at the pictures of it.

So basically, the Parowan Gap is a natural wind gap that formed in the rocks over a long time as the wind blew through.  Appropriately, it was quite windy while we were there.  It just so happens that the gap in the rocks is perfectly aligned with the movement of the sun.  On the summer solstices, the sun sets exactly down the center of the gap.  

But, it turns out nobody really knew this until about 20 years ago when some scientists started studying the petroglyphs that are on the rocks of the gap. (Also - it should be recorded that while I just looked at the petroglyphs and saw doodles, Cole actually figured out what one of them meant before the tour guide explained it.  That kid.)

 

This petroglyph (below) was the key to figuring it all out.  It's called the zipper glyph and they didn't really know what it represented until they superimposed it on a map and found that it was perfectly aligned with the rocks of the gap. 

 

But then they wondered what the two little things hanging down from it were.  They used GPS to find the spot of where they would be and found rock cairns there. It turns out the cairns mark the spots where the sun aligns in the gap on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.  So cool. Also so cool that no cows or boy scouts or hikers or anyone else accidentally disturbed the cairns before they figured them out.  Cause really, who would know that little rock pile was actually so amazing?

Our little group hiked to the vernal equinox cairn and watched the sun set from there.  Sunsets are pretty much my favorite thing anyway, but it was so incredible to watch it from there. 

 

 

 

  

While I watched, this scripture kept rolling through my head - it's one of my favorites - 

"yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator"  (Alma 30:44)

 

 

I don't know what the extra little spots and glares in some of these pictures are.  Probably something on my camera lens, but let's pretend they are solar flares or extra terrestrials or something cool like that.  

And if you wondered why our little darling Annie is not in any pictures, it's cause she is a beach girl at heart and couldn't abide the rather frigid temperatures that greeted us.  She spent the evening sitting in our car devouring all our trip snacks. 

Oh, and one more thing.  Anyone know the correct pronunciation of Parowan?  I always thought it was like "pair of wands" but without the f and ds and in my mind I will forever hear the state track meet announcer's voice saying it this way when Parowan High School runners were called out.  But, our tour guide pronounced it to rhyme with "heroin," and she is a local, so you would think she would know.  Sigh.