![[butte and sky]](butte.jpg)
Wednesday, September 26, 2001
Ultimately we're all alone.
I awakened to an alarm at 4:55 a.m. in Minneapolis. And shortly afterward Jan delivered me to the airport, ninety-five minutes in advance of my flight to Denver. Unnecessarily early. With lines short, I quickly checked my bag, received a boarding pass, and walked through security, then sat watching men wear their bellies like badges, as I drank my last serious cup of coffee for the week.
My plane had many empty seats. By mid-day I'd arrived in Denver, efficiently picked up the 4-wheel drive Space Using Veehickle I’d arranged to rent (Alamo will get my business again), breakfasted, provisioned for the week (seven gallons of water, granola bars, apples, trail mix, hard cheese and chocolate, Power Bars), and reached Vail Pass (alt. 10,603 feet). There I discovered that two of the three pens I'd brought had burst from the air pressure change. (Failed: a Pilot and a Uni-Ball; passed: Papermate Gel-roller.)
The temperature dropped from 84 in Denver to 66 near the pass. My heart raced and I felt headachy.
I saw mountainsides dotted with dark green pines and bright yellow aspens. Sedimentary cliffs jutting at a 35 degree angle to the road.
An hour later I stopped along Glenwood Canyon, watched a snake slither across a hot sidewalk, and briefly mistook grasshopper buzzing for rattler rattling. Dipping my hand in the green Colorado River, it came out uncolored.
As I headed back on the road, an Amtrak train snaked along the opposite side of the canyon on tracks hugging the base of rock above the Colorado River.
I sighted for the first time a bird that looks like a flying black and white saddle shoe, later learning this was a magpie.
Mid-afternoon I stopped for a "chocolate bomb" ice cream cone in friendly (and tiny) Parachute, Colorado. Towns in the western part of the state seemed unpretentious and working class while ski country communities there felt like artificial reproductions of Swiss Alps villages.
Achieving Utah before five o'clock, I headed off the freeway. "Next service 54 miles." No fences, no billboards. Yee ha! My jaw dropped to see huge towers of rock, red spires, God's toys left outside.
I crashed in Moab for the night at the second motel I saw. After registering there I visited the Grand County Library, open till nine each week night. Found out about magpies, for one thing. And checked email. How gauche.
Thursday, September 27
I arrived on top of the world before nine in the morning by clambering, shinnying, hoisting, and climbing out of a canyon north of Moab. Those red rocks looked like they wanted to be climbed. And anyway, what was on top? Among other things: monoliths like giant hammers, mushrooms, inverted funnels, and hats. Sandstone crumbling under my feet, I looked up, up, up at still more ledges, crevices, sheer faces, and overhangs. And beyond that was still more up to be had, a series of rocks, buttes, and gawd-knows-what. Could they be climbed with no more equipment than hands and feet?
Resting in shade after following a jeep trail, I heard a fly buzz around my head briefly. A jet passed by far overhead. A large-eared rabbit hopped away. Near silence. Close enough.
I walked on.
My descent stymied me temporarily. For a while I thought I might have to hike out on the jeep trail, wherever it led. Climbing is like doing a puzzle, piecing together--or trying and rejecting--possibilities. Getting down from high places can be harder than reaching them, but the dual excitement and relief of completing a climb is incomparable. Calling for two fistfuls of M&Ms and peanuts, in this case.
By mid-afternoon I was well away from civilization (Moab's chain motels, restaurants, and library). Within the confines of Natural Bridges National Monument I hiked down to the shade of a canyon floor to see Sipapu natural bridge from below, then looked up at sky, rock, sky. Stone striated like a turban squash.
Silence. One fly buzzing. It passed. At my feet: dry red clay. Around me: a huge rock amphitheater. Then my seat broke away underneath me.
Back at the top I heard the sound of a wooden flute, which turned out to be coming from a stereo in a parked (but running) automobile. Not totally away from civilization yet, I hit the road again.
Along White Canyon I saw red rock pocked with holes like Swiss cheese. Rocks with names: Cheese Box Butte, Jacob's Chair. A vast expanse of scrubby plants under the sky. A skinny deer crossing the road. Distant domes, bowls, and spires. Towers. Mesas.
I crossed the Colorado River heading north through more awesome country. My destination for the night: a cheap motel in little Hanksville, UT, population unknown. (Fifty-seven? Thirty-two?) The waitress was from North Carolina and called me Sugar. Melons were in season.
Friday, September 28
After heading west from Hanksville in the morning I hiked to Hickman Bridge in Capital Reef National Park, up and down a trail marked by cairns. Voices carry long distances in these rock canyons. I went off the trail and climbed a high rock, the world at my feet, head in the sky, looking down at the bridge and over at a still higher rock. Then I descended in order to clamber up the higher one. Returning along the path, three older couples approached who I'd passed on my way up. "Do you think I can make it?," a woman asked. "I know you can," I told her. "I saw you up there on that rock," one of the men said.
Looked at some petroglyphs by the side of the road.
At noon I rested under the shade of a juniper on a ridge at the turn-off from Utah 12 onto Hell's Backbone Road, having driven through the mountains of Dixie National Forest which have peaks up to over 11,000 feet. Utter silence, with cirrus clouds messed around in the sky above. Then a pick-up truck rattled past, two Dixie flag decals on its cab. Box Death Wilderness here I come, I thought. But not before I pee in the middle of the road.
One o'clock. Hell's Backbone Bridge. After driving up a curvy washboard gravel road, I reached a high ridge and the narrow bridge across it, on either side of which are deep, yawning canyons. I wondered if anyone had ever jumped from there. No normal camera lens can take in this expanse. If only I had bee’s eyes.
Mid-afternoon I set foot on my first Escalante area hike: Twenty-five Mile Wash, off a side road from jarring Hole in the Rock Road. Complete solitude there. The only sound: wind through the whatever -it-was: something looking like a 12-foot tall dill weed with tiny pink blossoms on the ends of branches. I later read something leading me to believe this was Apache plume, also known as feather duster bush.
Brittle clay at my feet the color and consistency of leather. Ninety-one degrees in the sun, but the pocket canyons I investigated were cool, with little if any sunlight reaching their floors. The thrill of discovering my own Peek-a-Boo Canyon. I had to snake my way around one corner by exerting opposite pressure with hands and feet and lifting myself up at the same time. Above: a jagged line of blue sky and clouds. In front of me: pink rock. The shushing sound of wind on stone, as if down a chimney.
My new boots were no longer looking so new.
Later afternoon, back at my car. Alone. Cooling. What I saw down there, along that winding river bed:
Rocks
slits and slots
rocks upon rock
clay the color of brick
clay that was a greenish gray
a natural bridge in the making
scrub jays
elusive unknown birds
lizards
hawk feathers
a rabbit
tracks and scat
a fly
holes in rocks
sheer cliffs
yellow flowering weeds (rabbit bush?)
the bottom of my second 50-ounce water jug
Early evening I drove to the bottom of a side road off a side road, off Hole in the Rock Road, beside a small, empty corral, and set up camp. Built a fire using scrounged juniper branches, mostly to ward off flies. Learned that dry cow dung indeed burns.
Started the night nearly naked on top of a sleeping bag, and ended it bundled up inside as the temperature dropped into the upper 40s.
Saturday, September 29
At dawn I drove back Hole in the Rock Road toward Escalante (population 947), stopping to use a composting toilet at the Devil's Garden rock tower site and to climb around there for a while. Breakfast: bites of salty Romano cheese and crispy apple. In town I booked a cabin for the night for $27, then headed back on Hole in the Rock Road to hike Dry Fork Coyote. The side road was deeply rutted in spots. Several motor vehicles were parked at the trail head. After hiking down into the main canyon, I explored two amazing side canyons, one called The Narrows in which there was sometimes no path at all but the need to scramble from side to side on the rock itself.
A white butterfly flew up over the rimrock. I sat with my back and torso in cool shade, knees and fingers in the sun. Then I climbed out the top of the canyon and took a look around. No people. No roads. No planes. Then peed a waterfall down a twenty-foot drop of rock .
Spooky Canyon is not for the claustrophobic--or fat. Maneuvering it required dropping to my knees at one point and putting my hat and knapsack beneath a big rock, then crawling under it. Next walking sideways, pack in left hand, hat in right, arching my back, sidling for a long way, on and on, rock in front of my eyes, rock at my back, sky not always visible.
Thought of my dad, among others. I was alone but not alone. A "moderately strenuous" hike, according to a guidebook. The hike up out of the canyon was far longer and steeper than I remembered it being on the way down. I drank 94 of my 100 ounces of carried water in about three hours.
Heavy clouds started moving in from the west but I took a long look at them and decided that while it might be raining in Escalante (they got a few drops, I later learned) it wasn't going to rain on me. So I headed for another hike of about 90 minutes or so, alone down Harris Wash, at the end of a 6-mile tortuous drive off Hole in the Rock Road nearer to town. Green sand and green rock. Arrived at an arbor, an oasis of sorts, though the wide wash was mostly dry. Hiked on sand--soft in the center of the wash and hard along the edges--and on pebbles. Highlight: one small red-blossoming weed in the middle of the dry stream bed.
That evening, my right foot was a bit swollen, so I stretched out and read for a while after showering, but then couldn't resist going for a walk to see the stars. There in the sky above Escalante was the Big Dipper. It seems to be following me wherever I go.
I washed out socks and underwear, figuring they'd dry overnight. (They did.)
No poetry. Is poetry a function of unhappiness or dissatisfaction?
Sunday, September 30
Sunburned, bewhiskered, stiff, and pretty happy.
What do the residents of Escalante do on Sunday mornings? I watched the sun rise over the Moqui Motel. What's a moqui? I think it's the mascot of Escalante High. [It's what the Hopi used to be called.]
In my cabin, a framed print: "View of NY Harbor from Weehawken." Wood paneling on walls and even the ceiling.
On this day I visited an Escalante cafe for breakfast, a small place with seven tables, plus seven stools at a wee counter. There I encountered signs of latent hostility, first in framed photocopies of these slogans:
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE.
NOTICE: THIS IS NOT BURGER KING. YOU GET MY WAY OR NOT AT ALL.
THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES.
Gawd. Add to that: bad western-themed art, U.S. flags, a cow's head with the words under it: 1) TAKE IT. 2) LEAVE IT, the chintziest flatware, tiny napkins so sheer you could read through them (I piled about twenty on my lap and they blew away), cold ketchup, pancake syrup that tasted only sweet (whatever happened to maple syrup?), and sullen service from someone who probably didn’t get enough sleep the night before. On the positive side: no smoking, something I like about Utah.
Midday: Me, myself and I on top of a mountain. Well, a big damn old rock surrounded on all sides by sky and red hills and valleys below--and across--from me. Very breezy. Earlier I’d climbed a high ridge visible from this point and an hour later arrived at this place across from it. Up and down and up. Red Canyon, west of Bryce. I sat in the shade of a small pine. (The cones were the size of marbles.) The top of this rock was covered with gravel becoming earth. A canyon wren flitted nearby. The wind shushed in insistent gusts. Why leave?, I wondered. I had food and water, after all.
Mid-afternoon I took a photo of a large phallic rock in Kodachrome State Park. Complete with testicles, uncensored. And also in the park, near an arch there to which I hiked, I left some of my skin behind on red sandstone. After climbing to a high notch, I came down a little out of control, first sliding and then falling, wrenching my left knee and bit and brusing my right heel. Badges. (I pictured something worse during the two seconds that it happened.) Say lah vee.
Totally silent there except for the wind through the something. (Rocks? Juniper?)
I saw green lizards, six to eight inches long, pale green, the color of the distant cliffs, protective. Rocks shaped like a mother and children, George Washington, Abbie Hoffman.
The road from Kodachrome to Grosvenor Arch was ten miles of washboard, ruts, washouts, switchback, big rocks, and feral cattle crossing. In the middle of nowhere. Correction: in the middle of some of the most amazing country I've seen, long scrubby high desert plains from which red sandstone spires appeared, and huge green cliffs, and regal masses of creamy sculptured rock. What artist created these spires and sculptures? The wind did. To get to Grosvenor you've got to drive down tortuous--and torturous--road, practically dislodging internal organs from mesenchyme, and then there's a pristine cement sidewalk awaiting you which winds from small unpaved parking lot to the base of the arch. Despite the jarring presence of the sidewalk it is a remote and deeply peaceful place.
Dinner that night back in Escalante town, at a place called Cowboy Blues where I was nearly alone. Ordered the trout fillet (the other pink meat) and listened to country music:
"And you don't even know who I am.
You left me a long time ago.
You don't even know who I am,
so what do I care if you go."
Dessert: a chunk of semi-sweet baking chocolate.
I didn't even feel like showering. So what that I was dirty? But I did, and glanced in the mirror, noticing whiskers whiter than ever. (It'd been a while since I'd gone more than a few days without shaving.)
Monday, October 1
What's the temperature back in Minnesota? Not ninety degrees Fahrenheit, I'll bet. I love the sun for making the shade possible.
Back at the confluence of two paved highways for the first time in days. After missing the turn for Horseshoe Canyon I went all the way to I-70, stopped in the town of Green River, consulted a map,
and then wended my way back south via a lonely road, 47 twisting miles of gravel, sand, and dirt. The trail head at the top of Horseshoe Canyon had a tiny shelter, composting toilet, logbook that indicated there'd been ten parties hiking that day. After climbing down rock for 35 minutes, I walked along the canyon floor and sketched some of the thousand-year-old petroglyphs I saw on the rock walls.
Regarding "petroglyph", Greek petros = "stone".
Another word for rock: escarpment. Another: talus.
Evening: I rented a room for two nights at the Lazy Lizard hostel (thanks, Karen). Fool moon in the sky, smell of sagebrush. But reverse culture shock hit me at the supermarket where I went thinking to get fruit juice or something. O. My. Gawd. Bright lights. Thousands of things which no one needs. Too much. Too many choices. I put my hand over my mouth, reflexively. Pies. Deli items. Salad bar. A hundred kinds of "nutrition bars", so many they rated an aisle sign.
Civilization means public libraries. Syphilization: the sort of neon, plastic, disposable, mediated surfeit I smacked into in Moab that night. I wanted to go back to from where I came, Escalante. Back to the lizards, sand, rocks, prickly plants, hot sun, shade, and water. If nothing else, this trip gave me a strong awareness of what matters. Elemental things. Water and shade, for starters.
On this day I saw a pronghorn antelope.
Tuesday, October 2
The temperature was in the mid-50s when I headed out in the morning. I opened my curtain and saw a tabby at the window, then went out and befriended it. There was another cat there, mostly white with sandy colored paws and tail. Come to think of it, that may have been real sand.
In the hostel parking lot (which abutted the grounds of storage garages): vehicles with plates from Alaska (Alas, Alack, Alaska!), Louisiana, and North Carolina (the latter with a Nader/LaDuke bumper sticker).
Hiked up to the lovely Corona Arch north of Moab in the morning, sketching it from several prospects, including from down below after hiking a mile along a railroad line. On slanted slickrock I held the hand of a white-haired woman inching along with a walking stick. She'd done the hike many times before and told me "I think I'll only go as far as the ladder." Said that if I saw anyone ahead it would be her son and her grandson. I did encounter them--and then heard their conversation from a quarter mile away, such are the acoustics of these rock-walled places.
Deep hollows in rock which will one day be arches. Made me want to play with clay. I saw curved lines of water seeps from which there was plant growth on the rock.
I chickened out and didn’t climb the forty-five degree rock with tiny hand and footholds which led up to near the top of the arch.
Vultures overhead. I could hear their wings beating like steam engine pistons. Braw!
Note to myself scribbled on a ten dollar bill: "Slot. Box. Pocket." (Kinds of canyons.)
Down the road, a curiosity stop at MOAB SALT, LLC ("Wholly owned by Intrepid Mining LLC", marketers of Moab Salt and Moab Potash). This place is marked on the map as the town of Potash. Beyond that point, "unimproved road, next ten miles." Then the road ends.
Killer sun at 1:15. Coyote sighting. It stopped and looked at me. Below, green trees were reflected in the green Colorado River. Above, a Jeep and two Land Rovers bumped along where no vehicles should be, high on a rock rim, in low gear.
Then I noticed that my right rear tire was getting flat, drove back to Moab, found a pressurized air hose, put some air in the tire, looked for a full service station, didn't find one, stopped at a convenience store and bought a tire gauge, used it and found out I needed more air in the tire, went back and added air, and then went driving up into the Manti La Sal Mountains, along a windy, narrow, and occasionally steep road. At some point I'd had enough of that and managed to find a place to turn around, then stopped and checked the tire. Losing air. I drove back to town and had a screw removed from the tire, thanks to proprietor Alvie of Big O Tires.
And that's when I went to Negro Bill Canyon and tried to get lost, on my last hike of the week, with the afternoon sun getting low over the canyon which dropped into shade, a hike which entailed eighteen fordings of the same fast-running stream, aided by two sticks I picked up to use as prosthetics, and which led me to a unique natural bridge Lush growth in the canyon, including Gambel's oak, evening primrose (large pale yellow blossoms), paintbrush, giant red paintbrush, carmine gilia, sagebrush, an unidentified feathery white flower, and prickly pear with lobes the size of dinner plates. Saw a tiny frog at the base of a cliff.
A bonus arch, infinitesimally small, as I neared the trail head on my return. I did my damnedest to get lost and it was good while I was almost there. Returned at sunset, feet hot and bruised. Thought about dipping them in the water below upon my return.
Sound of water on rocks. Cool breeze. Canyon in front of me where I'd hiked for two hours. Sky darker every second.
Brass marker on a rock there read:
"In loving memory of
Mark Irvin & Chris Holt
Lost/Died August 1995
While biking Porcupine Rim
Found above Negro Bill Canyon."
Who was Negro Bill?
I talked with someone there as the light was extinguished, a former Utne Reader subscriber who writes proposals for a library software company based in Provo, and who’d just been listening to Ed Abbey’s Desert Solitaire on tape.
Plenty of provisions remained, including most of that pound and a half carton of "dried plums", as prunes are now marketed. (What was I thinking when I chose those?) I oughta stay another week, yes? Oh, but at least one more look at the full moon. And the Beeg Deeper. And Cassie-o-pee-ah.
Sign in front of motel in Moab:
GOD BLESS AMERICA
HOT TUB POOL HBO.
Moon through mottled clouds. Another visit with my small brown tabby friend. Guys watching TV intently in the hostel's living room. (What's up with that?)
I sat and made up names: Little Death Canyon, Cereal Box Butte, Saline
River, The Rocking Horse, Eyebrow Arch, Devil's Turban, Poison Wash. (Real
name seen on a map: Jug Handle Arch.)
And read a little of Ed Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang. "Gargoyled
battlements."
Wednesday, October 3
That damn right rear tire looked low again. And it was. Fortunately for me Big O Tires opened at 8 and Alvie helped me out again, this time pulling a nail from the tire. How did he do that? Magic. By 8:30 I was on the road out of Moab, out of Utah, out of the West, and back to the world of right angles, straight lines, glass and cement. The crazy unhappy urban world. Denver: a mess of automobile traffic. ("Freeway" is doublespeak.)
I got to the airport with more than enough time to spare, ate a delicious burrito filled with arroz, frijoles negros, maiz y chiles (thanks, Maria Galvez), then spent about 25 minutes in lines to procure my boarding pass, check a bag, and go through security (where I was patted down). Afterward I amused myself by sampling hand lotion and lip balm (much needed) at The Body Shop.
O to have the job of airport carpet sweeper.
A man with many tattoos walked past me. Followed by a white man wearing a white caftan, white turban, and tan moccasins. And then I was saddened to see a sparrow inside. So wrong.
Walking down the jetway I looked back and did a double take: there was former Actual Size rubber stamper Leslie Faricy, heading back to Minneapolis with her partner Michael, it turned out, after a trip to Santa Fe.
The flight was full. Good thing my seat mates were young guys, not likely to notice--or care--if I smell a little gamy.
"Passenger Dodge? You ordered a VAY-gun meal?" I'd forgotten. And what was in that lovely little not-quite-a-plastic-bento-box? Two lovely cold mashed potato mounds, marinated in something yellow, dotted with chives and served on two red tomato slices. The presentation pleased and amused me, and confused the young man next to me. But what was up with the half a pita?
On the flight back to Minneapolis I read Dream Whip #11, a beautifully written zine by a Lubbockite (Lubbocker?) about his experiences in New York, seeing beneath the grime of an old city, and all of its decay, aging, dying, and gentrification, to the spirit which still hangs on there, alive, if only for a while longer.
Is it possible to be wild in the city? I'm uncertain now how long my urban life will continue. A part of me is still in Utah, on the rocks. And a part of Utah is in me, and on my shoes.
