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The Four Corners states are the high and dry lands of Southwestern America, savagely beautiful arrangements of rock, cactus, heat and snow, and home to cougar, bear and scorpion. Averaging 6,000ft above sea level - 50 percent higher than Britain's highest point - these are not natural environments for mankind, and their settlement is the result of grit and determination.

The marks on these landscapes are not by the hand of man, but the scars of Creation, bigger, more dramatic, more desolate, than can be communicated in words. It's enough to put blisters on a poor travel writer's adjectives.

Arizona. Typical cowboy country of scrub and cactus, broken abruptly by giant natural outcrops. Phoenix, America's sixth largest city, somehow thrives despite summer temperatures that refuse to drop below 100 degrees fahrenheit, even at night. Today's Phoenicians consume an astonishing 256 gallons of water per person per day (mostly thanks to swimming pools and golf courses) while the city receives a mere 7.5 inches of rain a year. Such extremes are typical of the Four Corners.

The Grand Canyon. This hole in the ground is so big that it can only be properly seen from space, and yet approached across its flat hinterland it only yawns open at the last minute. Of its two land-access routes, the North Rim is closed during the winter thanks to snow. The South Rim, with Grand Canyon village (State Route 64 from Flagstaff), is the focus of most tourism. Aim to be here in Spring or Autumn to avoid the heat and the crowds.

Statistics paint a telling picture of Canyon visitation. Of the four million tourists a year, twice as many travel over the Canyon in aircraft (600,000) as actually walk down inside (300,000). Typically, the average Canyon-side stay is just two hours, with 40 minutes spent looking down.

Below them, it looks as if a tribe of mice have gnawed their way through a massive lasagna. That may sound trite, but we have nothing to relate the Canyon to, other than statistics - up to 18 miles wide, 1 mile deep, with vishnu schist rock formations 1.6-2 billion years old. As a phenomenon, it is largely beyond human comprehension, which is why people peer over the edge, grunt, and leave.

Most of the Canyon is inaccessible to motorised vehicles, which, given America's love affair with the internal combustion engine, means it is also completely unvisited. A typical scenario is of a car pulling up, dad jumping out clutching a video camera - and son trying to follow. "Get back in the car", yells dad. "You can watch this at home."

You need walk around it or down into it to feel the Canyon's full power. The most popular of the paths down, the Bright Angel Trail, gets busy with mule trains, so a worthwhile alternative is to take the shuttle bus (no private vehicles are allowed to drive along the rim road within the National Park) to Hermit's Rest. Descend the Hermit Trail, or walk back along the rim, watching the lowering sun throw grotesque shadows.

For a serious excursion below the rim you need to bring or rent a tent, or book a bed in the Canyon-bottom Phantom Ranch. Of the many hotels the El Tovar, in old fashioned hunting lodge style, has the best position (contact number for both, 001 303 297 2757.)

Lake Powell: water in the desert is always an extraordinary sight, and few sights are more extraordinary than this, an immaculate deep blue carpet laid amongst soaring walls of yellow, orange and red sandstone, with nary a hint of green. Many are the moving pictures made here, from Mel Gibson's Maverick to commercials for Canon, Marlboro and Diesel Jeans.

Lake Powell is effectively another Grand Canyon, but this time with water two thirds of the way to the brim, thanks to the damming of the Colorado River. The lake took 17 years to fill, and there's strong talk of knocking the dam down again. True, the lake is a massive piece of human vandalism - straightened out, its shoreline matches the length of the US' entire Pacific seaboard - but where else in the world can you navigate through twisting canyons to visit a 275ft wide entirely natural sandstone arch (Rainbow Bridge)?

This is houseboat territory. Wahweap Lodge at the southern end has 500 of these craft - superbly equipped, but with all the elegance of a mobile home - rentable for three days and upwards (001 800 528 6154). The water is warm and crystal clear, and few visual experiences beat watching the last rays of the sun fingering the canyon walls.

Monument Valley. The scenery that originally put Arizona on the map, the Valley is essentially a flatland studded with soaring, dramatic red spires, pillars and buttes of rock. John Ford made his first Western here in 1938, with a little known actor called John Wayne, and a great many film directors have followed. Today, the Valley is a Navajo Indian Tribal Park, and is essentially a drive-through experience on state road 163, with plenty of opportunity to take pictures and buy Indian crafts direct from source. This is a visual, rather than a physical, experience. If you want to get off the beaten track you need to hire a Navajo guide, tel 435 727 3287.

Utah. This is the land that the Mormons pioneered: tough, rugged, and with more National Parks than any other region of the US. The Mormon presence is everywhere, but not as strict as it once was. After all, runs the local saying (as quoted by Capitol Reef local guide Tim Severn): "Catholics don't recognise birth control, Jews don't recognise Christ on high, and Mormons don't recognise each other in the liquor store."

Zion National Park. Giant shoulders of rock rise 2-3,000 ft on either side of the Virgin River. By the eastern access road the rock is pale and striated by erosion, as if a giant had raked it repeatedly with his fingernails. The mountain tops are wild, but the valley bottom is filled with cottonwood trees, purple sage and wild geranium, and riverside paths meander away to waterfalls and pools.

This is more of a human landscape than the other parks. Springdale, the main village, is wood-built and elegant, and attracts artists and craftsmen the likes of Stoneman, who works on his Indian sandstone sculptures by the roadside while his wife bakes bread in a wood fired oven. Flanigan's Inn (001 435 772 3244) captures some of that quality and creativity.

Zion was named by its Mormon settlers, who thought they'd found a promised land. They didn't have an easy time of it; just south of the main valley is the ghost village of Grafton, with abandoned wooden farmsteads and a bench under the walnut tree where Grandad once sat. The Grafton cemetery acknowledges flood and Indian attack as the ruin of the community, and on the grave of Robert Berry (killed by Indians) runs the message "Remember friends as you pass by/that all mankind are born to die."

Bryce Canyon National Park. The highest of these parks - Bryce rises to 8,810 ft - is not actually a canyon at all, but the flank of a mountain dissolved into a sea of fingerlike orange and white reefs arranged in amphitheatres. From a distance, it is as if some surgeon has performed an autopsy on Utah's chest to reveal a secret army of the state's own terracotta warriors. Close up, each of these "hoodoos" resembles the towers on Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

The Bryce experience is unlike any other of these parks. Descending into the amphitheatres from the rim viewpoints is like descending into a vast smokeless ruin of giant furnaces, with fiery sunlight bounding down the tall narrow walls, and tall ponderosa pine reaching up towards the sky. A variety of walking routes loop through and around, but this is not the place for long distance hiking.

To Boulder and Capitol Reef. Bryce has a touch of mass tourism about it. A better choice for distinctive accommodation is to take State Road 12, designated a Scenic Byway, eastwards through the vast, compelling wilderness of the Grand Staircase national monument (creeks, canyons and tormented rock) to the tiny settlement of Boulder. Here the Boulder Mountain Lodge (001 435 335 7460), light, roomy and airy, has an excellent restaurant in the Hell's Backbone Grill, where winsome twosome Jennifer Castle and Blake Campbell serve the likes of wild boar ravioli, vegetable chowder and pear crisp.

State Road 12 continues over Boulder Mountain (9,200 ft, tremendous views) and descends to the only really pastoral communities in this region, in the lee of the Capitol Reef National Park, a giant spine of sandstone that runs some 100 miles north to south. The road is well supplied with budget hotels, but seek out Teasdale, a sleepy Mormon farming community. The Muley Twist Inn (001 435 425 3640), summer residence of two ski guides from Colorado, has rocking chairs on the porch from which to watch the sun leave the valley. In the morning we found cougar tracks on the paths behind.

Moab and Arches. Back in the 1980s - "way back when", in the short human history of these parts - Moab was a mining town based on the uranium industry. Today, it is the outdoor activity capital of southern Utah, and mountains around it echo with whooping base jumpers, spluttering river rafters and the squeal of tortured mountain bikes. Moab itself is base for scores of activity outfitters, two out of Utah's three wineries, and numerous shops showcasing Indian arts and crafts. And as you'd expect with a town that attracts the young and outrageously healthy, it also has a humming nightlife. For complete relaxation, stay 17 miles upriver at the Sorrel River Ranch, a small, upscale rural resort on the beamy banks of the Colorado (001 877 359 2715).

The biggest single natural attraction in the area is Arches National Park, which from a distance looks like huge ships of rock on the horizon. Draw a little closer, and you can see daylight winking through. The park has more than 2,000 catalogued arches, ranging from a three-foot opening to the 306ft long Landscape Arch, so breathtakingly slender that it is plainly in imminent danger of collapse.

The rock structures in Arches range from giant fists to little goblins. One formation looks as if a herd of giant elephants knelt down to rest and then started to dissolve. Of the trails, the most rewarding is the hour-long hike up to Delicate Arch, perched like a massive signet ring on the rim of a giant sink. The setting of this lonely arch, on the lip of its huge amphitheatre of rock against distant mountains, is one of Utah's most dramatic. Eventually it too will collapse as Landscape Arch is so plainly about to do. If you do get to see it, count yourself lucky to have been on the planet when it was in its prime.

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