1.
Is it the wind that pummels the pinyon tree, now twisted in on itself as if hugging its own branches will protect it from further contortion?
Is it that the corkscrewed stalks can’t handle what blows across the blood red strata?
Or the Colorado River rushing towards the future? Does the snaking path have any idea that it crosses state boundaries? Would it care if it did?
Was the Gunnison River annoyed by those wanting to funnel it's waters from its steep Black Canyon pegmatite and gneiss through a blasted tunnel to irrigate the surrounding desert into harvest? One would think it wanted some privacy since the river cut deeper and deeper through the rock for its 2300 feet of depth, twice the height of the Empire State Building.
Not me, though, I’m no fool, but others needing to do it, to prove it, hike down to the river and back up again—not unlike the Grand Canyon in Arizona. At High Point near the end of the South Rim road in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado, several backpackers huff their way up the last couple of bends in the trail to the parking lot.
“Is it close?” The last one pleads as he nears me. All three, twenty-something, fit, healthy, puffing deeply.
“Yes, just around this last turn.”
You know, I’ll slog uphill for the glory of the panorama, and be glad for having done it, but to hike down first to a canyon only getting about thirty minutes of sunlight each day? I’ll leave it for those wanting that kind of grind.
As stories flickered in time with the campfire flames at one entry point to Yosemite’s wild lands in the early spring of 2015, those leaning into the fire’s warmth knew. We still know—what it means to access the wilderness.
“Every time I fill out a backcountry permit,” Ed said, partly into the campfire at Little Yosemite Backpackers Camp, partly to us, preaching to the chorus, “I ask the rangers what would make them feel good for me to put down on the form.” Then he tells them he plans on going where he’s moved to go.
“It’s wilderness I want,” he says to them. “I don’t want anyone to tell me where I have to sleep.”
“I’d like to get info on backcountry permits,” I ask the Canyonlands National Park ranger at the visitor’s center.
“It’s eleven hours of driving on the White Rim Road, and you can only camp in reserved spots. Permits are $30, but you can use it for the week. It’s a busy time right now. What nights are you looking at?”
“$30? I only wanted one or two nights. Let me explore and think about it.
I’ll come back if I want to reserve anything.”
She looks at the reservation schedule anyway. Nothing tonight. Other nights this week don’t offer anything half way along the rim, so I’d have to commit to at least eight hours of driving in between, on a four wheel drive road.
I understand the impact of those careening through the parks, crashing and burning without the respect needed for the wild lands to stay pristine. I get it. But, for those of us who tread lightly, follow the “leave no trace” intentions, those who have spoiled the freedoms have spoiled them for all. All of us around that Yosemite backcountry campfire felt the frustration of an over-regulated public park and have picked up micro-trash on the trails and at habituated campsites. Yet, we suffer the most from the abuse of the protected wilds.
One end of the White Rim Road can be accessed off the Mineral Bottom Road outside the Park where the Green River runs to crash into the flow of the Colorado. I park at the dirt road's side and walk my way to the road edge to view the hairpin turns on the one-lane road leading down the canyon to the river bottom. No guardrails. No way for one car to pass another. As I negotiate with myself the ratio of "courage" to "wuss", a van inches its way uphill, pulling a trailer with several canoes. As it rounds the top turn, I wave to the driver, then look again over the edge.
It’s a dry day. You have four wheel drive. Anyone at the bottom waiting to come up can see you coming down. You can do this, I offer myself. I commit, hesitate slightly before starting down, and shift the truck into four wheel drive, all four tires gripping the red dirt. The road is in great shape actually, really flat, with only a bump every now and then. I stay as close to the uphill rock face as I can, and brake the truck to stay at about two miles an hour, if that even. I don't even dare look down at the speedometer.
“No one is coming,” I say out loud. “There is no hurry... I’m proud of you... Keep your eyes just on the road—you’re doing great.” I make myself breathe, and keep talking myself through the decline.
Once down to the bottom, I shift back into two wheel drive, and follow the bumpier road along the Green River to the White Rim Road, then a bit farther. Two cyclists and a support van pass me in the other direction as I pull to the right, lower my window, and pull in my side view mirror.
“Afraid I might take it off?” the van driver asks with a smile.
“No. I’m just feeling extra wide on this road.”
He waves and continues on, but I leave the mirror folded in, and keep hugging the rock on my left. The views are absolutely stunning. Although I ponder staying down by the river tonight, I find a place to turn around, and follow the road back to the canyon, and the inch by inch drive back up the hairpins. The wind picks up once I get back to the top of the mesa, then the clouds thicken, the thunder bellows, and I’m glad I made the uphill trek before the road gets wet and slick.
"Did you see the remnants of some cars that had gone over?" he asks.
"No. I didn't take my eyes off the road. I'm so glad I didn't look." My fists squeeze in, knuckles tightening, just thinking about what would have happened had I looked.
"I've dirt biked down that road many times," he tells me. I first met G. and his friend C. in Big Bend National Park in November 2014, way down on the Terlingua Abajo Road near Santa Elena Canyon. Another white knuckle experience with a rental car I hadn't gotten the extra insurance on. I remembered G. had a storefront in Moab, and found him at his business one night.
"I'm hoping you remember me," I said to him and recounted my memory of our time in Big Bend.
"It's a miracle you found me. I'm hardly ever here at the store," he responded. "Yes, I remember that time." Nostalgia holds firm for both of us and we rendezvous for food to catch up, ending with the kind of hug needing no explanation.
To get away from the chaos of cars along the Park’s paved road, and the voice chatter bouncing down the red rock faces, I hike two and a half miles through desert sand and brush to reach the Canyonlands rim. The trail maneuvers down the plateaus to meet up with the White Rim Road, but I have no desire to scramble back up again. I pass only one other morning hiker returning from the rim.
The view is mine—light varying the shades of red and tan as the plateaus flow down to the White Rim and the Colorado River. The breeze momentarily covers the quiet of acceptance from the lichens attached to the slowly eroding stone. The river far below makes no peep. It’s as if time has shushed even itself. Only the lone fly, having finally discovered me sitting here, with its orange cheeks and striped body, that holds any interest in me. But I wave it away and watch it rest in the sunlight breaking through this morning’s rain clouds. A few tiny red ants pad their way up onto my leg, never noticed, until the movement corrals my attention and I flick them off before they bite. There is an honesty here, my whole being attuned to the minutae as well as the vista, my own stillness fusing into the landscape. This is my cathedral, unspoiled except for some rock cairns leading me along a trail through the slickrock, the only evidence of human interaction.
5.
Then there are the many arches, natural bridges, and spires dotting the landscape of Arches National Park just a couple of miles from Moab. On the holiday weekend, the line of cars waiting to enter might have added up to a hundred, each waiting and baking in the mid-nineties heat. A tourist parade crowding every outlook parking lot. Rangers playing parking attendants. Not what they signed up for, I’m sure.
“Come early or late, and beat the crowds” the park info says. But how early is early? I arrive by 8 a.m., line up behind five cars and start up the paved two lane switchbacks to find the arches I’d like to see again. It's been a lot of years since I quickly traveled through the area. I hit a few, but by 10:30, it’s clearly time to get out. And I do. I’ll try even earlier another day, maybe after the weekend passes and families scatter to other states and their lives there.
6.
I pick up a handout at the visitor's center on hiking trails in the Moab area that are not in the National Parks—like Corona Arch just under six miles on a round trip hike. Hopefully less people, and it turns out to be so. The trail takes me over slickrock and sand, up some chiseled steps along a cable, up a short ladder, and around an edge to the arch.
I bike the paved path along the Colorado River heading north. Then I drive the same road to spend a night in Castle Valley tucked into the red rock monuments hiding the valley from view. A verdant valley at the foot of the Manti-La Sal Mountains. Un-regulated public lands. The Bureau of Land Management has some rules, but they seem fair: stay off of private property and take out your trash, don’t stay more than fourteen days, so others can enjoy the lands as well. These rules make sense.
Although I wouldn't want to ever feel that mid-90's temperatures constituted a cooling trend, there is something about the starkness of a desert landscape that reins me in. Nothing is hurried. Like backpacking in the mountains where every step needs to be its own meditation, every mile here forces one to be present. Life seems nowhere, but, in fact, is everywhere. The biological soil crust ecosystem takes as long as fifty years to develop, instantly killed by one footprint or tire track. The blackened soil bumps protect the wild plants of the high desert. Nocturnal animals and insects ascend through their tunnels and hovels into the coolness of the night. If I stay open, I see it, and sense it. One black beetle scurrying across the red sand. A few red ants. A fly. A scrub jay landing on a branch. A chipmunk curiously peeking over a boulder at me. A long nosed lizard scurrying into the shade of a bush. A rabbit in the twilight. Of course we have to protect these lives, even if it means limitations on wilderness access.
As my friend J. from California said, "There are plenty of wildernesses available to explore besides the national parks."
But there is a reason the national parks are important too: for those not able to get into the backcountry wildernesses, wonders can still be seen and felt and heard. And for those of us looking to enter the cathedrals of nature, we have to find the less-traveled paths and celebrate the slog to get up, or down, or across, into these wild places.