merging awareness, creativity, and nature COLWELL CEDARs
Published in July 2018, Echoes of Time is the result of Joseph's Artist-in-Residence for the BLM in 2017, in cooperation with Colorado Canyons Association, the interpretive partner of the BLM in Grand Junction. Echoes features two dozen essays written as Joseph explored the fascinating canyon country that is a designated National Conservation Area. His fascination with the ancient geology of the Uncompahgre Plateau and adjacent canyons leading to the Gunnison River describes a history of over 1 billion years displayed in the rock-walled canyons of this part of the ancestral Rocky Mountains. As with his other essay collections, and his fiction, Joseph not only explores the scenery, but the meanings of time and the history of life.
Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area (NCA) is a special place in western Colorado. It was designated by Congress and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. On the edge of the uplifted Uncompahgre Plateau and bisected by the Gunnison River and three major feeder canyons—Escalante, Little Dominguez, and Big Dominguez—as well as many smaller straight-walled canyons, it includes Dominguez Canyon Wilderness . This wonderland of mesas and canyons displays millions of years of Earth’s history in its rocks. It also is home to a variety of plants and animals that range from river bottom riparian to sagebrush, pinyon-juniper woodland, mesa-top grassland and open forest, deer, bighorn sheep, cougars and chipmunks.
From early native inhabitants of thousands of years ago, to the modern history of Escalante Canyon and its early pioneer settlers and explorers, to modern fruit growers, this is a land of people. From the mysteries of the wilderness canyons, to the open views for the mesa-top uplands, this area provides a welcome escape from modern life and opportunities for discovery and appreciation of one of our Nation’s hidden treasures.