The question of how to see the park has no simple answer, for the park is too vast and complex to comprehend by a quick visit to any one of its many and varied parts or by any one means of transportation. Some, as did Major Powell, view it only from the rivers—by boat plus a few back-breaking climbs up the bordering canyon walls. Others see only the small parts reachable by passenger cars. The more venturesome see vastly more by jeep, foot, or horseback. And a few prefer to view it as the birds do—from the air. Many, those who put aside their magazines long enough, get bird’s-eye views without half trying, for Canyonlands is beneath the principal air routes connecting Los Angeles with Grand Junction and Denver. Actually, a full appreciation of all the wonders and beauties of the park is possible only by combining all these approaches and methods of locomotion, but only a few fortunate souls such as Bates Wilson have thus been able to inspect virtually every square foot of it. The task clearly before me, then, is how best to present such a complex wonderland to you, the reader. The method I selected, after considerable thought and a few false starts, is to begin at the top—the high mesas—and work my way downward much as the rivers have done in carving out this fantastic area, to some of the broad benchlands beneath the mesas and eventually to the river channels and deep canyons. Although the approach I selected may not be the best, and admittedly is but one of several that comes to mind, I hope it gets the job done. The High Mesas Even though the “peninsular” mesas east and west of Island in the Sky, known respectively as Hatch Point and the Orange Cliffs, lie outside the present boundaries, they provide breathtaking views of important features within the park, so brief descriptions of them are included below. But first, let us take a closer look at Island in the Sky. Island in the Sky As the map (fig. 1) shows, Island in the Sky is really a fork of a wedge-shaped peninsula extending southward between the two rivers. An outlier to the south named Junction Butte has already been severed from the main peninsula by erosion and now is a true island. (See frontispiece and fig. 22.) A large chunk of Island in the Sky south of The Neck was about to be severed by erosion from the main peninsula to become a true island, when recent widening and grading of the road gave it a temporary reprieve. When my family and I first squeaked over this narrow neck in 1960 by jeep, furtive glances to right or left showed the two canyons perilously close, and complete severance seemed imminent. The road builders have staved off disaster for a few thousand years, but ultimately the large section to the south will become another island, and a bridge will be required to connect it to the mainland. Its appearance from the air before the road widening is shown in figure 11.