A boxelder, within the narrow confines of Buckskin Gulch, clings to a thin sanctuary of sand between soaring Navajo Sandstone walls and the high water mark of past floods. The canyon is largely within the 112,500-acre Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness created by Congress in 1984. It is one of the longest slot canyons in the world, averaging less than twenty feet wide for more than twelve miles.