Welcome to Flameskimmers.com

TEMPORARILY DOWN

11/22/2011

Flameskimmers.com has been taken down temporarily. We apologize for any inconvenience, but we needed to move it to another host, and we're taking the opportunity to redo it. The site is several years old and it's due for a makeover. Hopefully it won't take too long before we have some of it back up again.

If you need information from the site that used to be here, please call Mary at (412) 422-1611, eastern time.

The Colorado Plateau and the American West

Don and I love the Great American West, especially the beautiful high desert of the Colorado Plateau in and around Arches National Park. This website is devoted to exploring the Plateau's natural and human history, as well as some of our other favorite aspects of the American West.

The Colorado Plateau is an ancient redrock desert of soaring plateaus and deep narrow canyons, and we think it's one of the most beautiful places on Earth; we know a lot of other people around the world agree.

Our goal is to create a window to the desert, so that wherever in the world you might be, you can open it up and look through and experience the wide open spaces and blue arching sky; the shimmering heat and distant horizons; the sound of the wind in high places; water dripping in a deep canyon; the blinding, heavy light of mid-afternoon; the perfume of hot juniper and sage and dust...

What Are Flameskimmers?

Flameskimmers are the vermilion red dragonflies that hunt up and down the washes that cut the gently sloping flanks of Salt Valley in Arches National Park. Their glittering wings clatter loudly in the heat and silence of summer afternoon. The dragonflies always come and check us out when we hike down there, and they're our constant companions as we explore up and down the hillside. For years we called them the "vermilion dragonflies", but we finally identified them as Libellula saturata, aka "Flameskimmers".

This website is dedicated to the American West we love, especially the high desert of the Colorado Plateau, and we've named it in honor of our dragonfly companions.

From the Navajo Nightway Ceremony:

In beauty may I walk
All day long may I walk
Through the returning seasons may I walk
Beautifully I will possess again
Beautifully birds
Beautifully joyful birds
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk
With dew about my feet may I walk
With beauty may I walk
With beauty before me may I walk
With beauty behind me may I walk
With beauty above me may I walk
With beauty all around me may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty,
lively, may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty,
living again, may I walk
It is finished in beauty
It is finished in beauty