Re-imagining Shangri-La

I was surprised to see the sharp cut in the volcanic surface. It was visible from the road. After camping close to it, there were plenty of opportunities to do dog-walks into this canyon, if that is what you should call this humble slot in the black volcanic rock.

The one thing that seemed certain was that the canyon was small, but sharply cornered at its top. But I didn't know what else to expect.

How nice! A few trees were decorating the canyon with the marvelous light greenness of new leaves. Unleafed-out sycamores stood out with their white bark.  The canyon bottom was strewn with large round rocks -- the product of water flow apparently.

All of this was such a glaring, but pleasing, contrast with the sharp-cornered top edge of the canyon. It was hard to imagine how a canyon like this could have been formed. Was there some kind of discontinuity in the lava surface where water flow got started, way back when?

I guessed right about the depth of the canyon. Usually the sidewalls were only 30 feet deep, and quite vertical. But it was surprisingly wide and had side canyons. This sudden expansion from narrow expectations has a funny effect on the mind. A delightful effect.

This humble canyon had me thinking of the Earth as a ball of molten rock, and of the force of water over all those eons. Ordinary notions of reality seem completely out of whack.  

How could such a small feature in the land produce such a large effect in a person's thinking? It helps that in a canyon you lose sight of what exists just a few steps away -- outside the canyon. New Mexico's howling wind sometimes dies in the canyon. And you hear an echo of your own voice when conditions are right. You leave the ordinary world and descend into the world of Pluto, of cooled lava fire and cool shadows from the canyon walls. Oddest of all is the force of water in a land where there ain't no water.

I was in a receptive mood to these surprises. Suddenly the voice-over of an old TV western came to mind about a hidden and happy valley full of oddball characters that the wagon train scout had stumbled upon. When watching that episode, the whole idea seemed a little far-fetched, sentimental, and escapist. But here I was, experiencing the same thing.

There is a word for such places. The idea shows up in different eras in different names: Arcadia, Utopia, the Garden of Eden, Robinson Crusoe's island, or the parallel universe in a science fiction story. Perhaps one of its most lasting reincarnations was the name, Shangri-La, in the book and movie "Lost Horizon," in the 1930s.

Once I knew an RVer who named his rig, Shangri-La. I suppose many travelers have such romantic notions -- and then proceed in the direction the tourism industry wants. Do they ever experience what they hoped for?

I doubt it. But there is the potential to do so, if only they would stop seeing Shangri-La as a tourist destination, and look for it where it really exists: in their own expectations and imaginations, catalyzed by surprise.