Desert Scramble - Pt 1
Somewhere southeast of Ely, Nevada, I pull over, get out, walk to the double yellow line, and sit down - snap a pic. It's cold, maybe 35 degrees, and silent, just the tick-ticking of the cooling truck engine. It smells faintly of sage, dirt, and motor oil. A single big raven lands on a fence post and connives for morsels. Not another car for twenty miles.
It's the distance - the space - that gets you. It obliterates. Here I am, a whirling speck hurtling down a forgotten highway. I will survive a few decades at most, not likely a century. But this immutable, indifferent expanse - this sky, rock, and weed is forever.
Language fails. Magnificent, spectacular, gigantic, beautiful - none of these words capture what is out here. How to describe 100-mile vistas in every direction? The expanse is beyond language. It can only be felt, not expressed.
It’s intimidating, to be honest. Like most of us, I think I am the star of my show. I make independent decisions, I take action, I enjoy the rewards or pay the consequences. But, here, confronted with mute infinity, none of that matters. My show is less than trivial, it's delusional. I have no impact, I have no consequence. It’s crushing.
All of my past mistakes come a-haunting. Have I wasted my one precious life?
Raven chuckles, “Hey, fat bald-headed - why you sittin’ in the middle of the road for?”
Breathe in, breathe out. Don't dwell.
I load Echo in the truck and drive on. There is a schedule to keep, enough of these crazy stunts.
Across another impossible basin and range is Cedar City, Utah, pretty in twelve inches of perfect pure white snow. I cross roaring I-15, and traverse south of Zion Park - see its spires and fingers, red rock faces and grand plateaus snow-topped soaring into a royal blue sky. Still grim even after all that, I take 89A south of Kanab and climb the Kaibab plateau. At the snowy top, there is a stone observation tower. The parking lot is empty. I stop. A slight breeze whispers through the cedars.
Echo and I climb the icy steps of the tower and look north and west over the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument. Echo puts her front paws on the rock wall and lets me scratch her back while we take in the view. Zion stands proud on the left hand, Bryce Canyon on the right. Both are frosted in virgin snow. Below their spires and peaks lay thick layers of red, ochre, grey, chocolate, and white stretching more than 120 miles wide - an area larger than the state of Delaware. To geologists, the layers reveal their paleo history. To businessmen and politicians, they are undeveloped opportunity. To me, they are fantastic, incredible, and mystical.
My photos do it no justice, but the boffins at the Forest Service provide this:
And so help me, I start to weep. Not big gulping wails, just little sniffs, and snorts, stupid tears coming from the corners of my eyes, nose all snotty. I wipe it away with my sleeve like I’m eight years old. Echo looks at me and licks my hand.
Crushed by the planetary scale in Nevada, I am undone by its beauty in Utah. In Nevada, the desert exposed my trivial nature. In Utah, it gifted me beauty beyond words.
It’s desert therapy.
I drive along the extravagant Vermillion Cliffs to Lees Ferry full of gratitude and wonder. The desert rejoices…like it's in love or something.
Up until the desert, this trip has been a scramble. What planning I did, got shot to pieces. It's too cold to camp - 18 degrees and snow in Ely, ice and fog in Idaho, mud in Arizona. The drives are long and the days are short, so there’s been little time for extra hiking or exploring. I drive too much and walk not enough.
I miss Dawn too. She and I are entangled with this strange elastic force. The further away we get and the longer we are apart, the stronger the force builds up to snap us back together.
Tomorrow, I let it snap me back to her.
Stay tuned for Part 2 - where Echo and I hike a wet canyon, explore an old, dry ranch, cross the immense Navajo Nation under their mountain to their magic canyon, and end up in the Tucson hive.
Peace.