Butte Canyon was nothing but layers upon layers of centuries old sandstone. The narrow canyon offered shelter from the direct sunlight. The Santa Ana's kicked up the dust, making the length of it like a wind tunnel, sand blasting anything in its path at certain times of the year. The walls were polished and smooth in some places. At its furthest end, there were petroglyphs some ancient Indian had painted on its walls to document his hunting prowess. The air was usually hot, like walking into a dry heat sauna. Sometimes, the scent of mesquite could be smelled. At its entrance, an assortment of tumbleweeds and different species of cacti could be seen. An occasional lizard or scorpion could be seen crawling under the jagged edges of the sandstone rocks.
Most wildlife was nocturnal, only venturing out during the darkness of night. The stars overhead could be seen year round, thousands of beacons of light blinking and beaming from light years away. Once the sun went down, the night air cooled to a temperature below freezing. The warm sand held the day's heat for a few hours, but it too cooled. The moonlight, if there was a full moon, lit up the canyon floor, but cast a surreal light on everything. The canyon floor at night appeared like some monochrome Dali painting in a ink black with silvery slivers of light. The outlines of things seemed blurred. If one was to stare too long into the night, one would swear he saw the ghosts of Geronimo and his Apache braves riding to the Mexican border. The lone howling of a coyote usually pierced the silence of the night, sometimes adding to the atmosphere. The feeling of being absolutely alone usually enveloped those who camped there. Yet, there was a peace to the desert that had been there long before man had set eyes on its soils. Few men in the twentieth century had seen its walls, far removed from the busy highways and strip malls, yet it still called to the heartstrings of the few pioneering spirits and native souls.
It was a perfect place to learn the ways of the desert. The canyon didn't yield its secrets too easily, sometimes taking years to learn its lessons. Those who had stayed there were erased, the footprints erased gradually by the blowing winds. Only the echoes of the voices of those who had been could be heard on those winds.