The Head of Sinbad is the highest point on the San Rafael Swell, a large plateau in central Utah, rising a mile and a half above sea level. Here, pale yellow-gray limestone from ancient marine life elegantly erodes its cliff faces. Creeks and streams radiate from the summit, flowing in every direction. Standing at its crest, I enjoyed a 360-degree view, surveying buttes, canyons, and distant ranges.

Although a short distance from Interstate 70, which bisects Utah and is within earshot, this location is only accessible via a rough four-wheel-drive path that winds through junipers, pinyon trees, and sagebrush. Just out of sight and to the right of this scene lies a shamanistic rock art panel (Barrier style) painted by hunter-gatherers who traversed this territory thousands of years ago.

A 1941 WPA guidebook to Utah credits the name "Sinbad" to Mexican traders who transported goods by mule train along a mid-1800s trail connecting Santa Fe and Los Angeles. The early 19th-century revival of Moorish architecture influenced what those travelers observed. The sight of the pillars, cliffs, and buttes along the route through central Utah's swell left an impression of "arabesque monoliths of multiple shapes and colors" representing "scenes or castles described in the Arabian Knights," according to the guidebook. While one might envision the rain-sculpted features of the cliff as having once been a castle's fallen peaked turret or the remnant of an ancient column, I see in its natural architecture something even more ancient: Jordan's city of Petra, which began construction in 150 BC by the Nabataeans out of and into its sandstone cliffs.