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I'm a Western girl at heart. Not born but raised, I feel most at home on the sweeping desert vistas and standing below the towering monuments to a history older than human civilization could ever hope to remember. Today, I traveled south, to one of the few places where I find true peace.

It's a four hour drive from Salt Lake City to Moab. People will argue that you can get there faster and you can, but I'm an old ninny. I drive the speed limit or slower because when I drive faster, I miss the heart-stopping beauty that surrounds me. As the Wasatch and Unitah Mountain Ranges give way to the Red Rock deserts of Southeastern Utah, I always find myself doing my best to not slide off the road as my attention is always caught by the stories in the rocks around me. If you listen, you can hear them speaking.

Today, however, was the first day I've made the drive in snow. I woke this morning to a storm working its way south across the valley. Trusting websites that told me there was only one place along the way that was advising snow tires and chains (neither of which I have at the moment, for some silly reason) I packed up and headed south.

The drive today was peppered with moments of abject fear. Cresting Solider's Summit, the roads were not icy but the wind had blown the snow across the road. Rounding curves at 60 miles an hour and hitting patches of snow like that can be quite terrifying. But it did little to take away my awe at the sights before me. The gray snowclouds puffed up at random intervals in the brightest blue sky, the snow peppered the red rocks, darkening the rocks to a near marron that peeked out from the sprinkling of white. Valleys stretched out before me and even when the wind sought to knock my car aside, I pressed forward, singing along to Queensryche, Don McClean, Tori Amos, and Hem. The stories the songwriters had woven into their music were even more powerful as I listened to the stories from the landscape.

I love Moab. It is peace, it is inspiration, it is power, and it is humbling. It is a silent monument and a reminder that we are fleeting in the span of history.