“This is the most beautiful place on earth.”

“Every morning I watch the sun come up over the LaSalles, it’s like right outside my door. It’s kind of surreal that I get to call this home.”

The above statements are about the same place.

Spoken 69 years apart.

The first quote is from Edward Abbey, the environmentalist and naturalist who, as a young park ranger in 1956-57, spent two seasons living in a government-issued house trailer a few feet off a rutted dirt road that led to Balanced Rock in what was then Arches National Monument (it’s now Arches National Park and the roads are paved).

The words are how he starts his iconic book about that experience, “Desert Solitaire.”

The second quote is from Brad Walker, the manager of Utahraptor State Park, the newest of Utah’s 46 state parks th

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