Welcome to Flameskimmers.com
We love the American West, but we especially love the high desert of the Colorado Plateau. This website is devoted to exploring its natural and human history, plus some of our favorite aspects of the American West.
This ancient desert of soaring redrock plateaus and deep narrow canyons is one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and we know a lot of other people around the world agree. Our goal is to open a window to the desert, so that wherever in the world you might be, you can look through and see the wide open spaces and high arching sky; the shimmering heat; the distant horizon; the blinding light; the smell of sun-warmed juniper and sage and stone...
A Sea of Burning Stone
Our favorite time to visit here is in the heat of the summer, during the monsoon season.
During the summer monsoon, from late-June through August, the afternoon thunderstorms bring rain to the desert. The storms are immemse and spectactular, but what's even more awesome than the lightning and thunder display are the life processes initiated by the rain. The potholes in the dry washes fill with water and soon begin to team with life. Shrimp, tadpoles, "predacious diving beetles", golden wasps, and a host of other bugs and pond scum race through their life cycles before the water dries out.
The potholes are archipelagos of life in a sea of burning stone that stretches to the shimmering horizon more than 100 miles away.
Looking
down a wash in the Arches National Park backcountry
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.