Certain Utah desert spots deserve the name "oasis," and one of these is Negro Bill Canyon.

North of Moab, its outlet three miles up highway U-128 paralleling the Colorado River, the canyon is graced with a refreshing perennial stream a good portion of its length. At the end of a short tributary canyon, about a two-mile hike from the road, is one of Utah's longest sandstone spans, Morning Glory Bridge.The canyon is named for William Granstaff, notes an informational sign at the trailhead parking area, an early non-Indian settler who came to the Moab-Spanish Val-ley area in 1877. Granstaff, Sandra Hinchman reports in "Hiking the Southwest's Canyon Country," was "a mulatto prospector, farmer and rancher who grazed his cattle here."

The way to Morning Glory is relatively gentle, though occasionally wet, and attracts hikers of all ages - including young people with tots and toddlers on their backs and wet dogs at their sides. The route basically follows the shallow rivulet - and splashes across it numerous times.

The water brings life to this gouge in the rock: Cottonwoods, oaks, grasses and the occasional flower line the stream (as does poison ivy, signs warn). Prickly pear cactuses thrive on the sandy benches nearby, bearing yellow cups in the spring and early summer that are just about roomy enough for one pollen-gathering bee to lounge in.

Part of the wonder of all this is that steep salmon-pink and orange walls border and tower over the canyon, a feathered trough in the bluff northeast of Moab. (The famed Slickrock Bike Trail is on the rocks above.)

"The canyon cuts through Navajo sandstone slickrock for most of its length," F.A. Barnes noted in his book "Canyon Country Hiking and Natural History," "thus creating high, spectacular cliffs, giant alcoves, age-patinaed walls, terraced shelves and great domes and fins, all looming above a lovely, winding stream that shelters a variety of aquatic life and is bordered by lush, water-loving plants and trees."

About a mile in, the first side canyon veers to the right as the main gorge swings left. In another half-mile or so the canyon branches again, the main trunk continuing east. Morning Glory can be found in the canyon (the second) to the right. Wood pillars bearing the bridge's name help direct hikers along the way.

Just about flush with the back of its box canyon, Morning Glory Natural Bridge is most awesome when you're directly beneath or beside its 250-foot-long arc. A small spring seeps from a crack below one support, and the water collects in a small reflective pool directly beneath the span.

Negro Bill Canyon is a wilderness study area. Less evident today is an old jeep track that continued beyond the trailhead, a road that put the canyon in the bull's-eye of controversy two decades ago.

During the peak of the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s, anti-environmental and anti-federal activists and politicians argued that the canyon should not be placed under wilderness consideration. In fact, the Grand County Commission declared the four-wheel-drive track to be a county road and attempted to bulldoze through a berm put in the way by the Bureau of Land Management. After the federal government filed suit, a negotiated settlement was reached.

Today, a meditative peace has settled over this beautiful and easily accessible desert canyon.