[ethereal music]
MAN: There's something about the uniqueness of Bryce Canyon.
There's a relationship here between rock and tree and sky and color.
I think this is a landscape that many people still don't realize even exists on the planet
much less in their own country potentially
and so coming here and seeing that for themselves,
I think you need a word at least as strong as magic
to describe what that experience is like.
WOMAN: You don't see it until you hit that rim,
it hits you and you're just overwhelmed with just how beautiful it is.
We have what is called the Bryce moment
and that's when people walk up into the amphitheater
and are just like "Oh my goodness"
and one thing I hear all the time: "This is better than the Grand Canyon"
which blows my mind, because that's one of the seven wonders of the world.
Peter: The Grand Canyon is awe inspiring and devastating in its scale and its beauty, but
there's a human scale to Bryce Canyon National Park.
the rate of erosion, the size of the features,
the intimacy that's possible, especially when one walks down a trail a little ways.
MAN: Being up on the top you are overwhelmed with the amount of hoodoos that are out there
and there's this nice panoramic view of these strange structures,
but then you go down into the canyon and you see these really nice subtleties
in these colors, these textures and it's a much more intimate experience
being right next to these chaotic or sometimes chaotic,
sometimes very architectural, hoodoos that are down there.
Emily: A hoodoo is a big tall rock spire that has eroded away from softer rock around it.
You can find them up in Canada, down in South Africa, South America, Turkey, China, Australia.
Peter: You'll find hoodoos on every continent.
You'll find hoodoos in state parks and national parks that are just down the road from here.
What you find here Bryce Canyon is the greatest concentration of hoodoos anywhere in the world.
Jesse: Why do we have these weird structures,
in this little tiny pocket, in this part of the country?
For one, the rock material is just right.
We have a combination of hard and soft rock that makes up the hoodoos.
and then we're at the right elevation,
where we have above freezing and below freezing temperatures
more than half of the days of the year.
Peter: When you consider that it's essentially a high desert national park,
you don't expect things like lush forests on the plateau
or things like ice to be the force that is breaking these rocks apart,
but that's exactly what it is.
The phenomenon that water expands as it becomes colder.
Emily: During the winter months, we start getting our freeze thaw cycle,
where snow will pile up on top of that hoodoo
and then during the day, we warm up and so all of that snow starts melting
and trickling down these long vertical cracks.
Jesse: it really is that drastic change of above freezing
and below freezing temperatures in a single day.
So what happens is water gets down into the rocks, it freezes into ice
and it expands and breaks it apart.
Peter: This is erosion, these rocks are disappearing
but they feel as if they're manifesting and taking these shapes
and continuing to grow larger.
[piano music]
The charismatic shape of the hoodoos and how many people can't help but see
forms and figures in them: people, animals, buildings.
on some level, I think you reconsider what is possible on this planet.
Emily: There's just something really mysterious and unique about them.
Anywhere you look in the amphitheater you're seeing something different
I feel, with the different shapes.
Peter: There's something that we're protecting in the landscape of Bryce Canyon
that goes beyond rocks and trees.
It has ultimately come to serve as a sanctuary for many things:
plants and animals, some of them rare and endangered,
dark night skies,
clean air,
quiet.
I don't believe it's possible to visit a landscape as unique and powerful as this
and leave unchanged in some way.
Jesse: These national parks and these beautiful structures protected within them
definitely have that effect on people.
It can kind of bring that childlike wonder to life
when you're exposed to something like this.