Cairn Free

Further Travel Down & Up Some Canyons

If you think the road’s bad now, just wait. It gets worse.

If you’re nervous about the trail ahead, having seen roughness at the outset, turn back now.

If you dislike hubris, assertion, and strong opinions--whether praise-song or damnation--stop reading.

Turn back, I say!

Day 1 (November 16)

Waiting for a flight to Salt Lake City, my name is announced. I think I've misheard, but it's called again a while later.

A guy at the counter tries to sell me an "upgrade" to first class for $75. I demur.

Soon afterward I'm aboard a nearly empty flight with two open seats next to me. Flying over ridges of snow. No, those are clouds.

"I will not be sad in this world." Who said that?

Cloud cover gone, we fly over serpentine creeks below in South Dakota, having crossed the wide Missouri. Over hills and rills looking like small gray-tan dirt piles after a light rain, a few small tadpole-shaped lakes, some roads outlining rectangular plots of land.

Blue sky above, faint shadows of clouds below. Hazy.

Now over pale sand-colored hills like dried mud caking upward. Like when a spatula lifts up from stiff frosting -- the small peaks left behind.

And dry snaking creeks winding into larger ones, which twist into a curvy river. (The Snake? Probably the White River, I later learn.) Then dark green ahead, forest land.

"Black Hills National Forest" the pilot announces. The dark green is nearly black.

I read from a manuscript by Margaret Miles titled Wanderlust. "True longing is when you have something and still long for it," she writes.

Miles quotes Georgia O'Keeffe: "The distance has always been calling me."

And Walt Whitman: "From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines."

Over Wyoming: Hey, there's some snow down there now.

"Improved light duty."

Gray-white rills now, the color of Iowa clay.

Then descent over snow-capped mountains. Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole to the north, the pilot announces, just as I was thinking this.

Mountains have spines and ribs. Did they once have viscera?

The Salt Lake City airport is full of white people. Blonde people.

My right hand—also my write hand-- looks diseased or tattooed. A pen leaked just as I pulled it from my pocket.

On the road, I stop at a grocery store in Provo--a cramped, dark, place straight out of the 1960s--for provisions: water, gorp, chocolate, apples, cookies, cheese.

Eight hours later I'm sitting in a small restaurant called Cowboy Blues again. (Been here before.) It's the only place open in Escalante, Utah, population 818. Seven patrons on a Saturday night.

I've driven 340 miles from Salt Lake City and am tired. Vistas during the last 40 miles from Red Canyon: awesome yellow rock amphitheaters, green and red layer cake cliffs, sudden vast drop-offs. No guard rails.

Through tiny Tropic (pop. 508), Cannonville (smaller still), and Henrieville, which seemed nearly deserted, with "CLOSED" signs everywhere and empty motel parking lots.

A little headachy from the altitude (5868 feet).

Two white-haired customers are speaking French.

"Is that okay for ya?", the waitress asks.

She lists the desserts options for them. Then one translates it into French for the other. It's a long list: pie (apple, blackberry, pumpkin), cheesecake, brownies, and more.

It takes a long time to get it all straight. "Do you guys both want blackberry then? Or apple? Pumpkin?"

Does this little place really hire someone to wash dishes? Apparently so. He's just arrived.

There's now a sidewalk from the Moqui Motel to Cowboy Blues. Is this progress?

At 8:30 I go outside and meet a long-haired tawny cat that’s been skulking under my rental veehickle. Maybe it was white-furred but had rolled in dust.

I drink a lukewarm "wind-powered" 4% beer from Salt Lake City's Uinta Brewing Company ("Cutthroat Pale Ale"). And sleep again.

Day 2

Cold pizza for breakfast.

At the trailhead to Lower Calf Creek Falls: scrub jays. I've walked a little over three miles to the falls and back, losing my pen early on. It's chilly now and I've added a layer.

The most beautiful line between two points is anything but straight.

I'm in a land where rocks live -- and speak. Where water lives -- and makes music. From upstream I hear a higher pitched quiet shushing sound. Here where I stand: a deeper burbling.

Canyon wrens flit and chirp. I finally see one of those kingfishers I've been hearing on my way up to the falls.

Red pictographs high on canyon wall: three figures holding hands. Warriors? Hunters?

I wonder what it looks like above the falls?

Zweep! zweeEEP! A scrub jay.

Cold pizza for lunch, then I head down a trail along the Escalante River, about two miles of lush country full of birds. Rufous-sided towhee. Titmice. More jays.

At a point where the trail crosses the swift-running river, I take off my shoes and socks, roll up my jeans. The water is icy--painfully cold--and deeper than I thought. I temporarily retreat. Then cross with the aid of a stick for balance.

Shortly thereafter I reach a point where a refording will be necessary, sit down to consider the matter, then decide to turn around.

I guess you could say I've gotten to first base with the Escalante. She let me kiss her on our first date, and I could see something good but she wouldn't let me touch it.

The echo of the river makes it sound as though water comes from the cliff beside it.

Is there such a thing as a western chickadee? Yes. And there's a flicker, the western version with a red mustache.

Tiny flowers: yellow, scarlet, purple. (Daisy fleabane?)

During the afternoon I scout a hike to Phipps Arch, way down big rocks. I err and go up a dry wash instead of down. Ending up back at a highway. This is just practice.

So many canyons. Which to explore?

Red rocks. Green rocks. Sentient rocks. Wise rocks.

High promontories and utter quiet. Silence that is noticeable due to the singular sounds which occasionally, if rarely, interrupt it. Dry yellow cottonwood leaves rustling. Sand blowing against rock.

Massive rock cliffs. Ancient rocks. Curvaceous rocks. Holes in rocks. Holy rocks. Sculpted rocks, shaped by water, wind, sand. Rock like bones, ribs, muscles. The living things upon it are simply nails and hair, almost extraneous. Cutaneous.

Only twenty-two percent of Utah's land is privately owned, says Terry Tempest Williams in her book Red.

A square mile of Escalante wilderness is so densely packed that you could spend a year exploring it. It's a maze and amazing.

Times passes.

Cold pizza for dinner.

Day 3

At a little after 9 in the morning, I'm 43 miles down Hole in the Rock Road at the Willow Gulch trailhead. (Correction: over a mile down an unmarked dirt road off the Hole in the Rock Road.)

The way here is occasionally tortuous--and sometimes torturous. I pass a roadside memorial on a hairpin curve where thirteen teenage Boy Scouts and their adult leaders were killed years ago after the truck in which they were riding stalled on the hill, then lost its brakes.

It's been eleven days since anyone's signed the trailhead register here.

A not uncommon description from a guidebook of how to find one trailhead: "Begin looking for a large solitary juniper tree on the right... About 200 yards beyond the juniper... turn left (east) onto an unsigned dirt road..."

A "PLAGUE ALERT" sign is posted at the Willow Gulch trailhead. A warning that squirrels, etc., may be carriers.

Silence here except for a jet far overhead. (It's remarkable how many jets pass over canyon country.)

Is Hole in the Rock Road a dead end? No. There's something beyond each so-called dead end.

It's going to be warm. In the low twenties when I headed out, it's already reached the 40’s. I saw one vehicle on my way here, headed the other direction. Good.

Time to mosey. As I descend the trail, it turns at a rock covered with a slanting flat table top.

At 11:30 I've reached an awesome place, beneath Broken Bow Arch. I've maneuvered down canyon, waded some shallow water, mucked through some boot-sucking mud, and bushwhacked through osiers. Saw old tracks of humans, fresh tracks of deer, raccoons, and coyotes.

Tall redrock cliffs-- 150 feet high? 200?

Sound of gurgling water below. A cottonwood glockenspiel.

Above me: rock and sky. I like my arches free like this one, not in captivity. (Free the arches!)

Then back up canyon. Buzz of a fly. Wind in my ears.

Two flying ravens' shadows moving high on rock. The sound of their beating wings. Then they perch on a cliff. BRAAK!

By midafternoon I've driven further along Hole in the Rock Road, near Davis Gulch, to a point where I will drive no more. At first I thought I'd lost the road, driven off it somehow, then realize it does continue here, but in a form so unlike a road as to cause confusion, if not incipient fear.

Beyond where I've parked is a road with rocky steps, slickrock which angles out of the ground haphazardously, tilting sometimes at a precarious camber that is difficult to walk, much less drive. Redrock streaked in places where the undersides of vehicles have scraped.

I hike ahead, laughing in amazement at the road, to a big rock on which is fastened a plaque commemorating Mormon settlers who came this way during the winter of 1879-80. Then I climb the rock and look out on everywhere.

Perhaps I'm farther away now from people than I've ever been. Not wanting to return, I'm in love with the land and don't want to go back to Escalante, much less city life. Where's my tent?

Down below: yucca stalks with dry open pods. Prickly pear, mostly dwarfish. Brittlebush?

High above the Straight Cliffs: Hole in the Rock Arch, appearing tiny from down here on the tableland.

Now it gets cool as the sun descends behind the cliffs.

No regrets on not driving farther. It's impossible to exaggerate how desperately unroadlike this road becomes here. Thinking about renting a mountain bike. But the best way to go is afoot.

Time to head back toward Escalante, with 50+ miles of somewhat malevolent road ahead. On the way I stop at Devils Playground to watch a fool moon rise over the hoodoos.

The temperature drops from 53 to 31 between 4 and 6 p.m.

Stopping at the gas station across from the high school, I purchase and devour a foot-long sandwich of black olives, pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, jalapeños, green peppers, banana peppers, mayo, and mustard. Vegetables! When had I last eaten one?

A pickle jar on the counter of the gas station collects donations for construction of a high school track.

Motelkeeper Sharol Bernardo tells me "the city" will be turning the water off tomorrow morning for maintenance and gives me a bucket so I can collect some now in order to flush the toilet tomorrow if necessary. No problem.

At 9:30 p.m. I'm back outside, standing in everything I've got: long johns, jacket, wool hat, mittens. My sister wrote to me that this would be a peak time for Leonid meteor showers. There's a schedule for this, as if it's a TV show.

A bright full moon lights the sky, but plenty of stars are clearly visible. Five minutes after I've driven to this spot on the dark edge of town, one dramatically bright green meteor arcs downward, about twenty times brighter than a star. What seems odd about it is its silence. It looked so much like a single firework.

Then I stand there getting cold, watching jet contrails by moonlight (and Orion rising in the north) but seeing no more meteors.

What happens to constellations during the daytime? The same thing that happens to my love when I am gone.

This quiet town. Two gas stations. No visible churches, drugstores, or taverns. Hundred-year-plus brick houses, their door frames boarded up and out of plumb.

The Escalante region: yellow sandstone domes, redrock amphitheaters, and sinuous canyons, some vast and others too narrow to traverse. Rocks like petrified beached whales. Sheer cliffs. Distant mountains. Vast and countless unseen canyons cutting and curving deeply, down, down, down to the Escalante, and then to the Colorado. (Correction: and then to Lake Foul, the reservoir caused by the damn damming of Glen Canyon.)

Day 4

Abandon ship. Abandon hope all ye who enter.

Abba: Was the Swedish pop group named after a standard quatrain rhyme scheme?

Pop, chips, and candy bars. That's about all the in-town gas station has for food. Hostess mini-donuts and Starbucks sweetened cold coffee in bottles. Not that I'd make breakfast of that.

Escalante is full of boarded up, slightly listing brick buildings with FOR SALE signs on them.

Before 9 in the morning I'm sitting beneath Cedar Wash Arch under a mostly cloudy sky. No signs pointed me here. No trails either. In little over a week I'll have forgotten how I even knew to set out for this place, though it does appear on a topographical map I have. Across some sand dunes off winding, rutted Cedar Wash Road (itself off Hole in the Rock Road), then down white slickrock to a wash, then a southward hike until discovery. The paths I followed along the wash were those of deer and coyotes. Their tracks are fresh but all the human footprints are faded.

On the way down I startle a jackrabbit the size of a fox.

Holes in rock are like eye sockets in a skull.

I think the sky will be clear by noon.

Less than two hours later, I've investigated a nearby natural bridge (Covered Wagon Bridge -- homely but interesting), then climbed to the top of a butte that tempted me. Scrambled across sand, then picked my way up crevices. The options were limited so I started cairning to enable getting down without too much difficulty.

My inner gyroscope seeks homeostasis. What is the right amount of excitement?

I feel like a butterfly collector or an agate hound. Just one more arch.

Why go anywhere else but here?

Before me: miles of upstanding sedimentary cliffs. Perhaps a mile away: the Straight Cliffs dotted with green. To my right and behind me: gray-yellow sandstone bowls, domes, arches, and proto-arches.

And the sun comes out as I thought it would.

A fly briefly visits my left ear.

Afternoon: at the top of slickrock sandstone dotted with lichens. From there, a friction walk down to sand dunes dotted with juniper, an area heavily covered with deer tracks. A sandy wash leads down to several dry waterfalls, two in the 10'-15' range around which I maneuver. And from there, a long sharply angled walk down sedimentary cliffs that layer red, white, then yellow.

Suddenly I reach a 50-75' dry waterfall, with deep canyon walls opening up below.

Ahoy: A cairn. There's a way down to the side.

I've been cairning on the rock much of the way down, something I appreciate upon my return.

Partway down I can see Phipps Arch far away, it's underside dark.

What are these things, circular, metal, broken-at-the-rock doohickeys on the slickrock, some knobby, slightly protruding?

At last the canyon floor is attained, a wide sandy wash at first, with leafless cottonwoods. After a while, two sets of fresh human boot prints enter from a side canyon, one of them matching mine exactly.

Eventually the canyon narrows and water appears. More cottonwoods, right in the middle of the wash. Then bushwhacking through 12'-high willows. Winding along the canyon, I wonder if I'll meet two guys, prepare to ask who's wearing the size 10-and-a-half Red Wings.

At 2:30 I turn back, out of prudence, not having reached the arch, but wanting to ensure enough time to hike out before dark.

Lizard on a rock.

This is just practice.

Time again for a leak. The Grand Canyon started with someone peeing.

Life here --and time-- is geological, archaeological.

Back at the top, the sun goes down behind rock, behind me, and my fingers grow cold. From twenty-eight degrees at dawn to the low fifties again, the weather's been ideal. I've been sweating in two long-sleeved shirts.

I'd better get going. But why leave?

I want to live here, visit that turreted, shadow-dappled white castle in the distance and whatever may lie beyond it. Learn to talk with ravens. And actually see one of those deer, coyotes, and raccoons whose prints are everywhere more common here than people's.

Follow the deer path, you won't go wrong.

A coyote howls: yip yipe yipe YIPE YIPE!, up, up, and up in pitch, then back down.

Back in town, I stop at the public library that is open four hours a day during the week-- and that seems to share space with community foodshelves in what was probably the old high school. A partially toothless feller, pushing 60, appears from around a bookshelf. Can he help me? Yes, I'm looking for bird books. He points out their location, asks if I'm from Es-cull-ANN-tee. Nope (not yet). He's surprised by the bird book request; says most people who wander in are hoping to access the Internet.

-----

Is this Tuesday? I'm at Cowboy Blues again and the place is rockin'. At least seven tables occupied. Three customers here are wearing feed caps. One of the three is a woman. And it's not all Anglos here tonight either, I'm happy to see.

Two guys go outside to smoke cigarettes. I like Utah.

It snows here. The seasons change. There are good people here. I've spent today hanging out with my friends Rocky, Sandy, and Liz.

This land--this inadequately described amazing place-- inspires not poetry but philosophy.

I suddenly understand how fervently religious people may feel compelled to proselytize.

Day 5

This place is a cornucopia, a Bartholomew Cubbins' hat place of never-ending revelations, fruits, and new mysteries. A bountiful place.

I'm eating pizza after a day during which I've hiked nine miles to and from the Hole in the Rock, and clambered down it (and above). The woman who made the pizza at this gas station/sandwich shop was in the process of making a dress when I barged in, the shiny blue fabric laid out on a table usually used for eating. The dress is for her to wear on Saturday at her oldest son's wedding, up in Bountiful.

Bountiful, Utah.

The name Everett Ruess keeps popping up. (The Canyonlands Natural History Association offers as its highest level of membership, the "Everett Ruess Society".) Born in 1914, Ruess was the son of an artist mother and a minister father in California. As a young artist and writer himself, he started traveling while still in high school, a three-month summer stretch of hitchhiking in his home state. The urge to explore never left him. After high school Ruess traveled for eleven months through southern Utah and northern Arizona -- on foot and astride a burro he bought-- painting and selling his paintings.

Back home he enrolled in UCLA but dropped out after a semester, feeling imprisoned. (Steve Allen's book Canyoneering 3, published in 1997 by the University of Utah Press, relates this.) In the spring and summer of 1934, Ruess spent time with Navajo people, "packed into Rainbow Bridge", visited Bryce Canyon, then came to Escalante on hearsay. On November 11, he left eastward for the canyons, never to return. A search was finally launched the next March after which Ruess' burros were found near the foot of a trail leading out of Davis Gulch and his boot prints identified at the top of the Hole in the Rock.

Theories about his disappearance range from the preposterous to the plausible. (He swam the Colorado and went to live with the Navajos. He was robbed by bandits who killed him and buried his body.) I propose another possibility. Everett Ruess entered a canyon and never left it, a canyon into which no human has subsequently set foot. Maybe he fell from a rock or was otherwise injured. Maybe he became ill or ran into foul weather. Maybe he found a place too wonderful to leave.

I don't want to leave. I'm thinking about staying another day here. Or five. It's 220-plus miles to Mexican Hat. I don't want to drive so much as keep exploring here, slot canyons, see if I can find the alleged Escalante Natural Bridge.

I'll sleep on it tonight.

Meanwhile, I watch the full moon set at sunrise. In a few seconds it slides behind the Straight Cliffs as if lubricated.

Breakfast: $1.99 for a large muffin and one of those cloying Starbucks beverages, like chocolate milk for adults.

I drive fifty-two miles down Hole in the Rock Road, past the spot where people died, bumping down a couple of white-knuckle sections at 5 m.p.h. until it turns into an absurdist's idea of a road: naked slickrock, red boulders leering at obscene angles, stairlike drops of well over a foot. From there I'll hike the four and a half miles to the spot where those Mormon settlers spent winter months building a rock ramp downward through a precipitous crack, and where they eventually disassembled their wagons and winched them down in pieces.

I'm off, on foot. The sun is pleasantly warm. There's a red rock dome with a nipple on top. I name it "Petit Teton", then stop and watch a black long-legged beetle moving resolutely ahead, the same direction as me. To the Hole or Bust!

Two miles to go. I better get going and catch the beetle. (May you breed-- and then be eaten by a beautiful bird.)

There's a scratch on the back of my right hand. And a tiny juniper sliver in my palm from an impromptu walking stick. And two scratches somehow through jeans on my left shin.

An elusive yucca-hiding bird, a ventriloquist whose high-pitched twittering seems to move widely: What is it? White flash under tail as one flies away.

Another flash of white up ahead. I get out binocs. Is that an animal? I move ten steps forward and look again. At my approach a rodentoid animal freezes. I watch it watching me watch it, and advance ten more steps. Its head turns. Ten more steps-- and it dashes behind a rock. Now I see its black eyes clearly--nose twitching-- and I've noticed a homomorph on the left side of the road, on its haunches. Not quite rabbit, not quite mouse. "Pika," I think, wrongly. Later in the Escalante library I learn that I've met white-tailed antelope squirrels.

Afternoon now, I've made it three-fourths of the way down the Hole in the Rock. This is it, the end of the road. But it's not. There's more ahead of me. Down below: the queer blue of Lake Foul, white rings around the base of rocks like bathtub scum. Total silence. But these rocks can tell stories.

I clamber further down, over large boulders, diagonal sheathes of slickrock. It's steep and slow-going, picking my way down. There's a trickle of water started and green things growing, even a small cottonwood tree with yellow leaves where direct light must rarely reach.

Then I come to a second tricky spot, a drop of about six feet, but with only one toehold and a crevice to use upon returning. I consider the possibilities. Stop and drink water and eat a snack. Try dropping large stones into the crack to see if one will wedge there that I can use as a step. Survey the ledge below for tools to aid in a return, boulders large enough to boost me but not too heavy to lift. A tree limb to pry into the crack to give me leverage.

Then an awful sound comes to my ears: that of a motor. In seconds a boat appears on Lake Powell below, making straight for the base of the slot. I gather my gear and make haste upward.

Soon I hear voices. At the lonely trailhead register only five parties had logged in during the past week, including me. There is no Hard Rock Cafe Hole in the Rock. There's not even a pop machine or a pit toilet (the latter of which someone could've used-- I later find a dirty wad of toilet paper on redrock above near five or six small flat black oblong splotches.)

The voices discontinue. Then I notice a wake in the water, trailing away, hear a throttle opening, finally see the boat accelerate away.

Hooray!

I continue my upward clambering. Not far from the top, the first tricky spot encountered on my way down poses a challenge going back. There's a ledge or step on which my right foot firmly rests. My left foot needs to be lifted to a foothold a couple feet up at the same time that I push off with my right and make a grab for what looks like a fair handhold. I rehearse what I need to do, draw a deep breath, push off with right foot and grab for a handhold above at the same time lifting my left foot for the toehold. Then I'm there, tottering on a rocky fulcrum as my midsection rests on the corner of the rock I need to clear.

A second passes. Two. My right foot waves in the air. Then my right leg starts to cramp.

Do something!

I boost myself clumsily, dragging myself forward, thighs inching over rock, then--with a burst of adrenaline--somehow I skip ahead a few frames to safety.

Pulling myself up I drag jeans--and a pocket containing nail clipper and jackknife--over rock, instantly abrading a couple of small holes. Mementos of an interesting place.

At the top I keep clambering, from cool darkness into warm sunlight, up onto slickrock domes above, and then to a sandy overlook of Lake Foul and the historic Hole.

Walking back--nearly two hours-- in an arid zone of rock, sand, yucca, and brittlebush, I see a glint in the road ahead. Coming closer now, I bend down to pick it up. A penny (dated 1991, not 1891).

Yee hah! I'm free to be me. Whoever the hell that is.

Roads are not inherently evil. Well, paved ones are. Roads are overused paths. Let's start narrowing cars instead of widening highways.

Ah, back in canyon country, peering at slits and entering slots. I just want to live like this all the time. Is that too much to ask?

My motelkeeper says that around these parts, near the confluence of streams, on the nearest high ground, Indian relics--potsherds, for example--are common.

I think I found some.

A thing of beauty is inversely proportionate to the number of times it's been experienced by humans.

Canyons. How can anything so huge, so vast, be so hidden? They're unfathomable.

Canyons are God.

I want to get to the bottom of this. Canyons are riddles.

This place is riddled with canyons.

-----

Late afternoon as I am about to back out of a parking place at the library, I see a small, slow-moving vehicle coming. I stop my backing and watch as a little cart with headlights tootles past, an open air thing akin to a golf cart, driven by an old man, beside whom sits a big dog. In back of the cart is a big sack --probably a 50-pounder--of dog chow, no doubt.

Gawd, are my whiskers ever getting white.

Day 6

Morning, on top of a mountain north of Boulder, Utah. Snow here in spots-- and mud, like Minnesota in March. Sunny, though, and lovely.

Quiet. Temperature about 40. A mild night in Escalante.

North of town I stopped at the Escalante River trailhead to examine the trail up canyon. The last registrants at the trailhead, two people from Nashville, Tennessee, commented simply: "STUPID". Apparently they didn't think much of the trail that began with a sign saying, "YUP, YOU GOTTA GET WET" and beyond it a gaping, cold, rocky river.

Ratchety sound of a kingfisher like a rubber band airplane unwinding.

I've checked out of the Moqui Motel --Moqui (or Moki) is what the Hopi used to be called -- and had a chat with Sharol about Mark Twain, among other things. Motelier Bernardo first came to Escalante in late May 1988 from California and was living there by August. A year later she garnered a job teaching English at the high school, a job from which she is now retired.

I slow for a deer crossing the road as I come up the mountain.

Behind me: a hillside covered with bare aspens, their thin white trunks. Last September when I was here they were covered in yellow.

At the last scenic lookout a sign describes the tableau to the east: "The area you see below you could contain the entire state of Connecticut or the country of Liechtenstein."

My ears pop as I drive up. Still haven't reached the summit of this alpine place. Coniferous trees below me--firs?--and below that, entirely different country: bare rock canyons and cliffs.

Boulder Mountain. Its altitude at the pass is over 9000 feet. A nearby peak: 11,000+ feet. Driving down I see ten-foot high orange-tipped flexible poles marking the road's edge, to keep snow plows from plunging off the mountain.

Some shady stretches of the road are icy and seem to have been salted.

The moveable orange gates on Utah 12 at the north foot of the mountain are open today, but the gates have "ROAD CLOSED" signs attached, something that must happen frequently enough.

What a wonderful, hardy thing the English language is. Tough enough to plough through dough. [Cough, cough.]

I watch four magpies fly across the road, flashing black and white with long slender black tails.

Onward, with a dalliance down a gravel road in Capitol Reef National Park to peer off the Sulphur Creek goosenecks overlook, an 800' drop.

Through the dingy gray rocks west of Hanksville. Past a dirt road turn-off to Dell Seeps (5), Adobe Swale (8), Burr Point (11). With a stop at the Hog Springs picnic area north of Hite where I hike up canyon for about fifteen minutes--fording the stream several times--and see giant paintbrush and cottonwoods (one with fluttering yellow leaves still attached). The trailhead register shows five sign-ins during the past week. Two recent entries by people from Germany, another one from Switzerland.

At the Hite overlook (Hite Heights?): Gads, it's mud down there. I'm surprised to see a gull flying below me over the muddy water. The bridge over the Colorado seems to span a wadable trickle. The silt back-up from the dam -- combined with drought-- has led to this: grass growing where once there was a river.

Driving down through red rock toward Hite I think about the loveliness of earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, rock slides, weathering, and all that "weathering" may connote. Seconds later, a road sign appears: FALLING ROCK.

An even more common road sign in the area:

OPEN RANGE
[cow picture here]

Onward, through Cedar Mesa. Then the world suddenly drops.

Muley Point overlook is awe-inspiring, the closest experience I've had to gazing into the Grand Canyon, a vast panorama below steep cliffs. Further below still: the curving entrenched San Juan River.

Above: a raven soars, every so often tucking its wings, doing a little spin, and vocalizing (BRAWWK!) in that deeply guttural ravenish way. Fly, spin, vocalize-- over and over. The only sound otherwise: a breeze in my ears.

The prospect is so awesome that it kind of made me want to gun the engine as I approached.

Then down the Moki Dugway, a road of hairpin turns, mostly gravel, that drops 1100 feet in three miles with a 10% grade in spots.

I reach Mexican Hat, pop. 100, by late afternoon, book a room for two nights, then have time to go climbing up on Mexican Hat Rock itself, a mile north of town. No one else there, no humans anyway.

From behind it doesn't look like a Mexican hat. But what is "behind" anyway?

The red rock here is friable, like dried mud, dangerous for climbing. How long will the Hat last, I wonder? And will this hamlet change its name after it tumbles?

My rental car looks like one of those National Geographic ads-- the sun going down behind Monument Valley, a big sexy gas-guzzling SUV parked there on the rocks.

Overhead: ten jet contrails in the west-northwest sky at dusk, between clock hands 9 and 11.

I'm staying at a swank place for two nights. It's not just that the toilet paper is folded to a point, nor that there's a coffee maker in the room with a one-use packet of Folger's. There's a cable TV, is if I need to entertain myself-- or avoid thinking original thoughts.

$29 a night at the Mexican Hat Lodge. The bed has room for three. So what that there's no chair. And so what that the coughing woman motelkeeper prominently displays a bumper sticker proclaiming CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT. (See Michael Moore's film "Bowling For Columbine" for a look at Heston in his own home.)

She's a got a CB radio set-up in her office, I notice.

Mexican Hat is situated on the San Juan River ("fastest flowing major river in the United States", according to a source I have failed to note), across the river from the Navajo Nation, near Monument Valley whose buttes have been seen by viewers of John Wayne films.

Businesses here: one over-bright Texaco Food Mart across from this place, one motel that's closed for the season, a combined RV park/trading post/laundromat, a trading post/gas station/motel/café, a small LDS church, some trailer homes, and--down at the river, kind of like the suburbs--the relatively upscale San Juan Inn and Trading Post which advertises "Fitness/Meeting Room". The inn has a bar and grill where I've just eaten a fry bread "Navajo taco" larger than my head, served with an entire jar of salsa (homemade?) by a woman who carried on a running conversation in Navajo with two men at the cash register.

On the menu (just to show you upscale): Squatter Brewing's Unfiltered Hefeweisen and Wasatch Brewing's St. Provo Girl and Polygamy Porter.

Clientele this evening includes rafters. And Germans.

Displayed on the wall: photos depicting the business in its rustic days, the 40s and 50s (even one from 1938: two rafters on the river), old rusty license plates, and crude wooden signs with mileage to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

But best of all, over in a dark corner, a framed artwork showing over forty natural plant parts used for dyes, curled lengths of yarn dyed all those colors, and a small sampler woven with many of these yellows, browns, and reds, labeled in English and Diné:

sumac bark, penstemon, gambel oak bark, juniper bark, rosecliff, red juniper root, single flower actinia, Indian paintbrush, sumac berries, red gilia, red onion skin, sunflower, sage brush ("ta'ah"), alder bark, "afterbath from black dye", small snakeweed, globemallow, purple larkspur, blue flower lupine, rosehips, white onion skin, brown onion skin, canaigre dock root, canaigre dock blossom, Navajo tea, juniper berries, wild onion, corn husk, rubber plant, rock lichen, prickly pear, yellow sweet clover, juniper mistletoe, wild walnut shell, ground lichen, wild blackberries, wild walnut leaves, chamiza, yellow bee plant.

In a guidebook I read about the complex national struggles--and history--of the Hopi and Navajo people, whose troubles were exacerbated by European colonizers and colonial governments. I feel like I'm visiting bantustans.

"Cattle guard." "Line camp." "Social trails."

From a brochure: "Moab's beautiful golf course has expanded to eighteen holes." No comment.

There is more traffic on the road here--U.S. 163--than I've seen the past four and half days in total, including driving 250 miles today from Escalante today via Hanksville. Why? I've consulted a map and see that Mexican Hat lies between Flagstaff to the southwest and Moab and Grand Junction to the northeast. It's on a throughway.

After dinner I go back to Mexican Hat Rock to stargaze from a spot away from the burg's few lights. The moon is hidden by cliffs, and I can see moonlit jet contrails and a jet flying through the Seven Sisters.

A brief meteor, small and white, arcs in the east. I stand in one spot and await moonrise, noticing that behind me moonlight reaches the ground not far away. Slowly a brighter glow develops in front of me, plants at the top of the rock are backlit like hairs, and finally a sliver of light appears. Then: lift-off. A bright beam stares at me, the brightest full moon I've ever seen.

Day 7

Free, that's how I feel this morning heading out into my day.

Then I am temporarily blinded by rising sun as I drive up precipitous, winding, narrow Moki Dugway. At one point as I head up I can't see a foot in front of me, and so stop the truck--holy shit, what if a car comes down now?--and get out, thinking (wrongly) that I can see better without a windshield in front of me.

I get back in and inch desperately forward, gripping the wheel, then--after a few magical seconds pass--reach a point where the sun is partly blocked by rock and then the road turns away.

Free. "I can do anything I want to do." For me a vacation is a chance to do things I don't ordinarily do as much as I'd like: walk, explore out of doors, write.

Bullet Canyon trailhead, 8:30 a.m. Which will it be, Cairn A or Cairn B? Neither, thanks. I'll make my own way.

It was frosty in Mexican Hat at dawn, but it's warmed to 39 degrees. I'm wearing a wool sweater, wool hat, mittens. Before long the sweater comes off to be stashed in my pack, then the mittens and hat, the latter replaced by a cap with a brim.

Too many damn cairns. I resist the urge to topple some.

The trail is heavily trampled, somewhat surprising given its reasonable difficulty and length, but not in light of its relative nearness to a paved road. There are two other vehicles parked at the trailhead beside mine -- and I'll later meet two hikers coming back (a portly middle-aged man who looks hale and hearty, followed by a younger man who seems to be dragging).

On the way down I discover a sort of bonsai arch-- a cow-sized rock with a hole in it the size and shape of a deflated football.

Then a weird thing happens. I faint.

I'd been feeling a little light-headed, the way I sometimes feel if I get up too fast from crouching at a bookshelf. Next thing I know my legs have gone out from under me and I sit toppled--and a bit befuddled.

Not a great place to faint, but at least it didn't happen when I was standing at a precipice.

I drink some water, gather my wits, and continue down, an elevation drop of over 1100 feet, to a point where the canyon widens to contain grassy meadows and huge rock amphitheaters and stadia.

Deep in a canyon, with the sun's rays on highest rock rims, I suddenly flash on a friend in Nepal and the idea of pilgrimage, arduous travel to a place of spiritual importance.

It's warm in the sun--low 50s?-- but it seems even warmer with exertion.

Four clear colors of Cedar Mesa: blue (sky), red (dirt), green (junipers and pines), white (rock canyon walls).

High on the rock in front of me, a scrub jay flies past pictographic images of three white circles in a line, about a foot in diameter, with perhaps six feet between each one. The first is solid white, the second leave two small red circles showing like eyes, the third is a white circular outline with three parallel vertical lines crossing it in the center.

Flies swarm around me now as I sit and rest down canyon.

1 p.m. I'd better be getting back.

I clamber up a 40' icy pour-off that I made my way down in the morning. A foot's width on either side is ice-free and safely passable. Ice also in pools here, so firmly frozen that I break the tip off my walking stick when I test it.

About a nine-mile hike, sometimes leisurely. Seven and half hours.

Nine miles: that's a walk from 10th and Nicollet in Minneapolis to 86th Street in Bloomington, with steep canyon walls and icy waterfalls in between.

Taller than wide = butte. Wider than tall = mesa. Mesas dwindle into buttes over the years.

Hiking back up canyon I encounter a 12-sprig tree, not two feet long, growing horizontally, straight from rock, six feet above a dry wash. And I see a yellow-bellied sapsucker.

At dusk, after driving down Moki Dugway again, I detour seventeen miles on goddawful rutted, gullied, stone-covered, twisting road through the so-called Valley of the Gods, watching a pink and blue sunset behind dark buttes, mesas, and cliffs, from out of the corner of my eye. Then someone turns up the intensity knob and the pink turns to flaming red, many degrees brighter. Then all goes ashen and slate.

I stop to look at an information board posted at an entrance to the road and jot down names given to some of these rock formations: Lady in the Bathtub, Rudolph and Santa Claus, Castle Butte, DeGaulle and His Troops, Battleship Rock, Franklin Butte, Rooster Butte, Setting Hen Butte, Seven Sailors Butte, Flag Butte, Scotchman Butte.

At first I think, "Hmm, that sort of looks like Santa and his reindeer," but then five minutes later: Omigod! No "sort of" about it, that is Santa and his reindeer.

I name a few rocks myself: Rhino Butte, Tall Ship Rock, Hoop Dress Lady.

Tired and gassy. (Those beans for dinner and breakfast.)

Read before bed? Maybe so. A book is a trailhead.

Day 8

I awake during the night with the theme from "Born Free" going through my head. (Cairn free?)

Never have I been so glad to see clouds as this morning. The sun's brightness is thus dimmed as I drive up Moki Dugway.

On the way from Mexican Hat, one of those free range cows crosses the road in front of me.

Greg Ward: "When they finally get around to declaring all of southern Utah to be one vast national park, Muley Point will surely be the centerpiece."

That's where I watch the sun rise this morning. Windy and cool. A nice place to have breakfast, I say. (Cold pizza.)

The dingy green San Juan winds its was below me. Which way? Impossible to tell.

Land of multiple sunrisings. It rose once. Now, from a different angle, again. It's been hidden by a mountain. Orange glow in the sky, behind dark blue bands of clouds, behind distant black cliffs.

Someone has been camping out up here in the back of an open pick-up.

A while later, I drive into the visitor center parking lot at Natural Bridges National Monument, five minutes after the place opens. Right on my tail: a Ford SUV out of which pile six Japanese tourists. (I’m the one in the Mitsubishi.)

Book for sale in the center: A Field Guide to Desert Holes. (Scope: animal hole identification.)

Midday, up White Canyon from Kachina Natural Bridge, on a rock surrounded by a pool which has a thin layer of ice over it. I'm just past the ugliest sign I've seen all week:

A sign intended to discourage the timid.

It's time once again to trespass on public land.

Nature as Andy Goldsworthy: A tree in a wash with debris wrapped around it higher than my head.

"'No,' I explained."

Basic rules of canyoneering:

-Don't be discouraged.
-Pay attention to landmarks-- and the sun.
-Find the easiest way, generally.
-Don't go down if you can't get back up.

Evidence that humans have been walking on slickrock: smudges of red clay on white rock.

A special kind of pebble: small wind- or water-worn spheres between the size of ball bearings and marbles, making slickrock truly slippery.

Up-canyon, between Kachina and Sipapu bridges: Anasazi ruins mid-cliff. And a small white boulder with a window in it nearby, like an eye socket in a calf's skull.

Halfway up to the rim from Sipapu I watch a raven fly below me.

A park rangerette, followed by an even younger woman who seems to be her pupil or trainee, bounds down the switchbacks smartly as I trudge slowly upward, a step at a time, with the aid of my stick.

The way is so serpentine that I meet myself coming back.

Up on top, I see a raven fly off from an RV on which it had been perching. And notice that one did its business on my no-longer adworthy vehicle, intentionally, I'm sure.

-----

Blanding, UT, Saturday night. The scent of sage outside my door. I'm staying at a $25/night rundown outside (but fine inside) motel run by a red-faced 60ish Mormon whose office serves as utility closet, laundry room, and studio. (He was painting a landscape when I arrived after dusk.)

Coming into town I saw two Ute youths hiking on the highway.

My room has a cable TV and copies of The Book of Mormon in English and German, items I'm as likely to use as a hairdryer or tampons. All I wanted to try were the shower (it works), the heater (ditto), and the bed (it's fine).

Not in the mood to eat out, I down the final piece of last night's pizza, an apple, and a couple of granola bars from a box scored at a giant brightly lit Muzak-playing general store down on the south side of town.

Blanding has the first chain businesses I've seen in over a week: Taco Bell, Subway, A&W, Motel 8, Comfort Inn. A veritable metropolis of over 3000, Blanding has an airport, a theater (though it's closed on Saturday night), and even a branch of the Collidge of Eastern Utah.

The Blue Mountain Panorama (a weekly?) has a top of the fold story about a visit to nearby Monticello by the grand poobah of the LDS church who'd come for the dedication of a new temple there. (A photo shows him accompanied by a personal bodyguard and member of the local sheriff's department.) A subtitle says he prayed for rain to end the drought.

No taverns in this town, Tom.

I fail to connect with Canyon Country Zephyr editor Jim Stiles when my two quarters aren't enough to get his phone number to ring. Apparently it's not a local call from here as I'd expected. I figgered the conversation might go something like this:

"Hello, Jim? This is Everett Ruess, Jr."
"Hello? Is this Chris?"
"Well, I signed 'Everett Ruess, Jr.' at a trailhead register today."
"Where are you?"
"I'm calling from one of Blanding's many bars."

And so on.

Day 9

My first hot cup of coffee in eight days. It's old-fashioned bad restaurant coffee-- and the non-dairy dreamer curdles in it-- but it's coffee.

The counter in this place has two real saddles in place of seats. Music coming from speakers somewhere: Country. (Whatever happened to "& Western"?) This place is geared to the tourist trade, but there are some locals here. Two guys here wearing caps.

Suddenly I'm reminded of the Rimbaud poem I once adapted as "Greasy Spoon."

For a week my boots got torn up bad
On the rough roads. I finally got into town
And went to the same greasy spoon where I'd always had
Ham, hashed browns, toast, coffee, and eggs upside down.

It was all right. I stretched out my tired legs
And looked around with a grin like a child.
Then the waitress came around with my eggs,
And, shaking her huge tits at me, she smiled.

That flirt knew I was looking at the birthmark
On her cheek. Then she set down the grub:
The eggs were hard, the hashed browns dark,

Good and greasy, heavy with onions and tart
garlic; and she poured the coffee in my mug,
Black, black like the warmth of her naive heart.

The hashed browns are damp inside, obviously having been frozen. The pancakes tough. But it's food.

Outside the place: house finches. Urban birds.

My day in summary: I visit the Butler Wash ruins overlook (just a half-mile path from the highway); hike Mule Canyon and find Anasazi ruins -- climbing up to them and then, for the hell of it, to and over the rim and back to my truck from above; drive further on the dirt road that eventually rivals the Hole in the Rock Road for badness and impassability, then stop and hike about a mile on it and back; then go back toward Blanding, turn north on an unmarked dirt road, turn on two other dirt roads, then park when the road tells me "stop here," and spend about an hour hiking up a dry wash (dry except for one pool) all the way up to the rim, then back down.

In Mule Canyon, above the ruins: four adult hand prints, dark red on lighter red stone, high above my head under a large rock shelf: right, left, left, right. The left two are positioned counter-intuitively.

Near the trailhead, on the other side of the road, at the base of some talus: a rusted car chassis. Nearby, a bottle with a rusty cap still affixed. Raised letters in the glass: FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITS SALE OR REUSE OF THIS BOTTLE.

Cedar Mesa: piñon, sage, juniper, occasional prickly pears and pin cushion cacti.

The rental veehickle is now covered with good clean red dust.

What's the ground cover I've been seeing that creeps like wild strawberry and has bright red leaves amidst the green, so red they look like blossoms?

The most pleasant and satisfying times I've had out here have been when walking where no human footprints nor tire tracks can be seen. Making--or finding-- my own way, picking my way up a cliff somewhere away from a jeep trail off a dirt road off a gravel road, where the most recent tire tracks are covered with deer tracks and weeds. Where the cairns are my own.

The principle of cairns, the small human-made rock towers used as trail markers, can be summarized: "Humans have been here." Thus, "Never fear." Also: "Here's the way to get to a place." And, importantly, "Here's the way back home."

Next time maybe I'll bring a tent and go deeper than this superficial day hiking will allow, even if it does mean squatting over a hole in the ground.

"Pines were between me and the stars. The night was cold." --Everett Ruess

Late afternoon: I shave off nine days' worth of whiskers using a disposable razor and a stub of shaving soap.

Shaving is barbarous.

I cruise Blanding to consider the dinner options. On Sunday night, they're limited. Chocolate shake and onion rings at the A&W. Sheesh.

If I lived here, I'd have to mail order food and spices--and shop for groceries in Salt Lake City at least a couple times a year.

Suddenly I’m grateful to live within 3/4 mile of a food co-op, an open-all-night supermarket, a panaderia, several Asian markets, and a Middle Eastern grocery/deli. Spinach and tomatoes would be good right now.

Part of me dreads returning to email, mail, and phone messages. I'm feeling pre-besieged.

Where does poetry go when it goes missing?

Day 10

Heading north from Blanding at dawn, I encounter snow near Monticello, falling, swirling, accumulating on the road. Elevation of the town: 7069 feet. Abajo Peak: 11,360.

I watched clouds rolling in last night.

Halfway to Moab I see a ribbon of light to the north and guess it will be a lovely day, clearing. And so it will be.

I gas up on the south side of Moab (digital message on the gas tank: SPANISH TRIAL SHELL), then head straight to Arches N.P. With fresh snow on some of the trails and north-facing slickrock covered with ice, three days before Thanksgiving, there are some hardy visitors here, many of them Japanese and German.

DANGER
AREA AND TRAIL CLOSED
BEYOND THIS POINT
DUE TO ROCK FALL
FROM LANDSCAPE ARCH

(Significant rock fell one day in 1991 from the 305' long Landscape Arch which was already thin.)

Very windy. I hunker down and use my walking stick as a third leg as I cross the spine of a fin toward Double O Arch.

The stick. Das ist mein Stab. It's been a boon. Used for propulsion, braking, stability, boosting, bracing.

Eventually I encounter three young men, two of whom are about ready to turn back, one of whom is considering pressing onward down an icy slickrock passage. The latter fellow and I scoot down a dicey incline where there is rock on our right to prevent falling, an angle not too steep to crawl back up. But the way looks riskier ahead where a slip could mean a fall and injury. We balk and demur until another time.

I utter "Ohayo" to a young woman on a trail who simultaneously says "Hi."

PARENTS, CONTROL YOUR CHILDREN.

Delicate Arch mid-afternoon. Standing on the rim, I have to hold on to my two hats. (Yes, I'm wearing a wool stocking cap over one with a brim.) I hunker again out of the wind and sketch the Arch and its surroundings.

It's a magical place, high on rock, yet with a concavity in which enough water collects periodically to support life.

Near the trailhead: modern (c.1650-1850) Ute petroglyphs. Also near the trailhead: a crew of six young men and women wield jackhammers, picks, and shovels. Sign near the visitor center: MOAB FAULT. Moab has several faults, I think.

During the day I see a number of young children, all of them happy. One of them, perhaps two years old and wearing a bike helmet, hops along behind his family at his own pace, stepping on toddler-scale rocks. Then his dad comes back and gives him a shoulder ride.

I encounter a thirty-something German couple-- and their daughter who I judge to be about seven-- several times during the day. Each time the girl is skipping. Back in town after sunset, crossing Main Street, there they are again. Yes, she’s still skipping.

Back of Beyond Bookstore: its doors are locked at 5:57, though the sign says open till six. I've been scribbling in a composition book which has spaces on its cover for name, school, and grade. I'm in the 41st grade.

Bright lights, big city. On the plus side, the best meal I've eaten in weeks: homemade cheese ravioli (toasted and served with nicely spicy marinara sauce), salad, bread, Squatter's Pale Ale, to the accompaniment of classical music.

News in the weekly Moab Times-Independent largely relates to the land: mining, trail use policy, a prominent local doctor and his wife who were caught digging up Indian artifacts. Court news: someone fined $500 for 23 counts of "dog running at large."

Willow Gulch, Phipps Wash, Hole in the Rock, Escalante River, Muley Point, Mexican Hat, Bullet Canyon.

Valley of the Gods. Devils Garden.

I want to talk with ravens.

Day 11

On the road by 7, after two swallows of bad motel coffee, to Arches N.P. again, wanting to see Delicate Arch at dawn, alone.

Twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit.

NO WOOD GATHERING IN PARK. How about wool gathering?

I scoot up the trail in half an hour, fueled by sleep, perhaps. But I'm not alone up there. (I'd seen a car at the trailhead.) On a nearby ridge are two people with a tripod, facing the arch's sunny side.

Soon they depart, though, and I'm alone with my thoughts and feelings and the rock around me. Standing on a parapet looking at Delicate Arch lit by the risen sun, I’m surprised to suddenly sense tears in my eyes. I think: May everyone in the world know this sort of beauty, calm and peace-- and may I do my part in fostering this.

A half moon sets overhead. A frigid breeze blows.

I think about my father, how he would have appreciated this place. How it will always be a part of me that I was never able to articulate gratitude to him for his role in my being alive, for nurturing, and for being a model of kindness and gentle strength.

And I think about others from whom there has been some severance.

Coming down.

Life is full of chockstones to be surmounted, bypassed, climbed.

On the road, heading north and west. I see one more magpie. This will have to do for a while.

NEXT SERVICE ON I-70
110 MILES

I watch a train lug up an incline. This country has been taken over by the "extractive industries." What is that billowing smoke around the bend?

Some snow on the ground near Tucker, UT, at a rest stop northwest of Soldier Summit, 7440 feet. Ice on a fast moving stream. I've just encountered the Mormon artist motelkeeper from Blanding here, over 200 miles from his inn. Who’s following whom?

Snow-covered peaks nearby, at least one in excess of 11,000 feet.

It’s jarring to see a license plate on a van that depicts the same stone arch I saw for real at dawn today.

On the west side of the mountains: a valley full of smog, far as the eye can see. (Which isn't far.)

Provo, UT: gulls and pigeons.

Late afternoon, I'm on a full flight to Minneapolis, jammed into a "cabin." Not at all like the cozy little cabin "up north".

I draw Delicate Arch and its setting from memory, write no more words.

Red Cliff, south shore of Lake Superior, May 2002

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