Thousands and thousands of years ago before our ancestors were living in trees and checking each other for fleas the earth was a very different place. This was way before menthol cigarettes and GPS in your Chevy suburban. The earth was covered in a lot more water and what is high ground now was low ground then. We still had mountains and valleys but many of the valleys were filled with the wet part of the inland sea and were used as migratory routes for huge and very large creatures that moved around the earth as they completed their life cycle.

They were very much like our modern whales except larger, dwarfing and doubling the size of our 90′ Blue whales of today. They moved about, swimming slowly and majestically, using the narrow canyons to get from one large body of water to another. Had you been there you would have heard their voices echoing off the canyon walls as they sang songs ancient to them at that time.

They were using these watery highways for a very long time as can be seen occasionally by the shallow but smooth troughs made as their bellies slid across the then sandy bottoms of the valleys. Today we see these slick rocky depressions in the stream beds as a smooth surface that the water flowing over and through has made even smoother.

They traveled the same way they do today in pods of undetermined size, mothers and calves swimming ahead and gigantic males following behind to protect them from what ever danger there may have been for them. But the huge males couldn’t defend them from what Mother Nature intended for the world. There was an incredible climatic event that enfolded at a speed unimaginable to us now, where the earth suddenly and without warning changed and was thrust up in a gigantic upheaval raising these valleys and the surrounding valley walls to a height of over 8000′ or more, trapping the unlucky travelers making their way through.

The water drained away and as it did it turned these few pods into stone leaving their shapes behind to show us they were here. The water was slowly replaced by soil made up of eons of trees dying and falling, mixing with the decomposing stone, turning into the rich material that now supports the profusion of wild flowers nestled up against them. The very earth that surrounds and supports these leviathans of the shallows. Today millions of years later you can still see their rocky forms forever caught in an endless migration. Mothers with their calves by their sides, caught as they slowly breached the surface so the little one could breathe. The large males still mostly submerged with just their giant tail fins standing clear of the water, still traveling through time on that endless journey.

This particular pod had been traveling through a valley that we now call Lady Moon and can still be seen by any one with the imagination and desire to see ancient travelers. And if you are particularly fortunate and listen closely you may still hear their ancient songs as the wind catches them off the canyon walls and carries them past you on its way to nowhere.