Trevor Huxham

Glen Canyon Dam On paper, modern U.S. Sun Belt metropolises like L.A., Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, and Albuquerque shouldn’t exist. They simply don’t have enough water nearby to support their populations of millions of people—or their agricultural industries beyond city limits. It’s the Colorado River, hundreds of miles away, that allows them to survive in the desert Southwest today. A plumbing system spanning half the continent stores this river’s water between tall canyon walls, delivers its under entire mountain ranges, and even pumps it uphill all to supplement the water supplies of major cities and farmlands in California, Colorado, Arizona, and more. Stand at the foot of Glen Canyon Dam on the border of Arizona and Utah, and you’ll come face to face with the linchpin of modern civilization in the desert.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the things we thought only used to happen years or centuries ago can definitely happen again. I grew up in a world where polio could no longer stop you from going to school and where the worst that could get you sent home sick was mainly colds, flus, and chicken pox, not the deadly measles now covered by routine shots. And plague? Like polio, it was just a history class lesson.  But here we are at the end of a year that has seen one of the worst pandemics since the 1918 flu, reminded that outbreaks of infectious diseases can still occur—and will continue to occur—even in our advanced scientific age. View from the rim It’s this kind of reminder from Mother Nature about the reality of the world we live in that makes me think of Meteor Crater, out in the lonely expanses of northern Arizona.

Cliff dwellings It’s 4:00 p.m. and I’m in a race against time: after having driven through Wupatki and Sunset Crater Volcano national monuments earlier in the day, I’ve got just one hour to visit the last of the Flagstaff-area monuments before closing time. The park ranger at the front desk lets me continue through the visitor center after I display my annual parks pass, and once I’m back outside, I quickly descend a steep set of stairs while managing to  not  fall off the cliffside of Walnut Canyon National Monument.  Just 185 vertical feet later, and I’ve made it down to the trail that loops around an “island” floating above a meander of Walnut Canyon.

Sunset Crater Volcano As I drive south from Wupatki National Monument , junipers begin to replace the sparse scrubland of the high desert north of Flagstaff, Arizona. But it’s not long before the juniper woodland gives way to hardened lava, rolling hills, and ponderosa pines. Lava flow I search for the namesake peak of Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument between the pine branches as I drive around one hillside to another, and then—there it is: a clean, Platonic-ideal-form cinder volcano with a ruddy, “sunset” gradient from red to gray on its side. I’m momentarily distracted as a striking Steller’s Jay flies by, its own blue-and-ashy-gray feathers painted the complete opposite of Sunset Crater’s gradient.

When you think of ruins, what comes to your mind? Maybe the flattened apartment blocks of Roman Pompeii , a once-glistening palace for a Moorish caliph , or the spindly skeleton of a Lisbon church . For many Americans, our imaginations often turn to history-rich Europe, where the remains of empires, wars, and natural disasters are easy to see. But that’s a shame, because we can find reminders of the past in our own backyards. Nalakihu Pueblo Sure, they may not be on the same scale as Mexico’s monumental pyramids in Teotihuacán or Chichén Itzá, but the cliff dwellings and villages built by Ancestral Puebloans make the Southwestern U.S. the best place in the country to encounter places that were inhabited almost a thousand years ago. Colorado’s Mesa Verde and New Mexico’s Chaco Culture are some of the biggest marks the ancestors of today’s Puebloan peoples left on the Southwest, but they’re either in the isolated Four Corners region, off long dirt roads, or both. Wupatki Natio...

Babbitt Brothers Building You can think of Flagstaff, Arizona, as the gateway to all that northern Arizona has to offer. From Flagstaff, it’s easy to daytrip to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, encounter the enduring cultures of the Hopi and Navajo people, retrace historic Route 66 in all its kitschy glory, or go hiking and skiing in the San Francisco Mountains. But all these activities, as attractive as they are, require you to be stuck in your car for hours at a time. The Weatherford Hotel Flagstaff’s historic downtown gives you the freedom to get out of your car, stretch your legs, and begin to acclimate yourself to more than 7,000 feet of elevation. This district’s regular grid of streets makes it easy to navigate the neighborhood, while dense, human-scaled development makes cars unnecessary to get from one hotspot to the next. Here in downtown, a new storefront opens up every few steps, from bookstores and hiking outfitters to healing crystal stores and candy sh...