More than seven-hundred and fifty million years ago, an ocean covered the globe. Then, an ancient continent broke up. The waters receded.

The story of this old ocean is embedded in the desert of southern Utah. The guides here talk about the world in increments of thousands, millions and billions of years. They point to tracks left by dinosaurs and the ancient petroglyphs sketched high on the rock face; the sedimentary layers of the rich, red Navajo Sandstone formations and the blackened lava fields speak to a time long before that.

It is as if everything here has always existed this way in this place, and yet rooted in the cliffs and desert sands is a story of constancy, of change and of resilience. “This was the bottom of the ocean,” one guide explains, her gesture taking in the groun...