“I think those human interest stories are what resonate with people,” he tells me. “Yes, we got to talk about the rocks—but being able to find a human interest story along the way is great—it’s important.”
The day prior, as we trundled along Ruby Canyon’s riverside cliffs and cross over the Utah-Colorado border, I asked our hosts why some of the mesas we’ve passed contain pale stripes of green. “If you take a shovel to one of the ant hills along the rail tracks, you can find fossilized shark teeth,” Mike told our car of a dozen-plus passengers. “That’s because 100 million years ago, this was an ancient sea.” The jade-like tint of the rock, he went on to explain, is that color because underwater (where there’s little oxygen), iron deposits from volcanic ash turn green. It’s the opposite of how iron reacts with oxygen, which forms the reddish-brown of rust.
I returned my gaze to the desert and attempted to picture the millions of years of history coded within the exposed earth. “So that rock was around when there were dinosaurs?” I asked, incredulously. A tangible object remaining constant for that long, among so much change, was unfathomable to me. And that I could reach out and hold this dinosaur dust in my fragile human hand, even more so.
That is when Mike reminded me that the Earth itself is just a really old rock, and that its 4.5 billion years of history are always there, right beneath our feet. It just takes the right combination of salt and erosion—and a good storyteller—to reveal the hidden layers.
Onboard experience
The Canyon Spirit offers several different all-inclusive packages and eastbound and westbound itineraries along this route. No matter which you choose, the journey will include daylight-only train service, regionally inspired meals served to your seat (breakfast and lunch), alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, overnight hotel stays, and luggage transfers. Some itineraries also feature off-train experiences—the six-day “Mighty 5 Explorer Package,” for example, includes guided tours of Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion national parks.