Two Sides of Red Rock

I’ve been flying for work quite a bit lately. Each time as I return to Las Vegas, I’m happy to see the desert floor stretching out below because I’ll soon be returning to my home and family.

I’m not sure how many different pathways a plane can take to McCarran Airport, but I’ve noticed a few approaches.

I love coming in from the East because you can see Lake Mead and the many directions it reaches out into the desert.

I don’t like coming from the Northeast because usually you have to fly around the city and come in from a different direction. After a long flight, that extra fifteen minutes is like salt in a wound.

This last week, I flew in from a convention in San Jose and we came right near La Madre Mountain and the natural jewel of Las Vegas, Red Rock National Conservation Area.

I took this picture out of my window as we came in on the flight path:

Here was my thought: One side of that mountain is just a…mountain. It looks like all the rest. The other side is a beautiful and endeared natural wonder.

I’m not a geologist, but from what I understand, it was the Keystone Thrust Fault, and it’s movement during the Laramide orogeny period 66 million years ago that roughed up this part of the desert Southwest and exposed the vibrant, and young, red rocks. And now it shows a view like this:

As we continued our descent to the airport runway, I was thinking to myself “This is not unlike people. Sometimes it’s the jarring movement of change that will expose us, set us apart from others, and help us become our most beautiful self.”

We live in a great world. I wonder what is hiding inside each of us.