(If you received this blog by email, you might
want to visit the actual site. The formatting of the pictures is much better there.
Just click on the title "Monumental near-miss")
Just click on the title "Monumental near-miss")
Back in the day, the arrival of spring always meant a backpacking trip in southern Utah with a
stalwart group of friends—right before Memorial Day to add an extra day to the trip. Southern Utah was also the destination of countless other trips spent hiking, biking, and sometimes running. And on nearly every Utah trip,
we cruised through Grand Junction, stopping only for gas, and then headed west to our
beloved red rock country. In the process, we blithely passed by Colorado National Monument just outside Grand Junction. Occasionally, someone suggested that we spend some time hiking there. But we always decided (to my
personal delight) to go on to Utah instead. Honestly, I wanted to move on because I wanted
the “real” experience that was only possible in southern Utah, the place where I had learned to love
the desert—its canyons and plateaus and flowers, and its soul-baking heat. The
Monument seemed like a pale approximation of what I was looking for, so I
always voted in favor of heading on down the road.
This year promised to be the same story. My partner and I planned a quick trip to Capitol Reef in Utah, where I hadn't been for years, as this year's red rock “fix.” But time and circumstances conspired against that plan. So I reluctantly set it aside, and instead we plotted a short visit to Grand Junction to spend some time with friends there and check out Colorado National Monument. Folks have told me that we'd find red rock formations reminiscent of Utah, and though I was skeptical, it seemed like a worthwhile adventure. Sure enough, it turned out to be a wonderful visit—I'm regretting never having stopped there before.
We arrived in “Junction” to a rainy evening, the Monument only occasionally barely visible through the rain and fog. But we had a great dinner and long visit with our friends and made plans to explore
the Monument—and, time willing, other local sites—the next day. We started out under threatening skies, but
with the view of the Monument right ahead, I was quickly
transported to that warm meditative place that the cliffs and colors of the
Colorado Plateau always take me.
I was really surprised by how much it reminded
me of Utah. If I focused on being there, in the rocky surround, it could even
feel like Utah (in the rain). I watched the cliffs rising around us through
rain-splattered windows and hoped for a break in the weather so we could
actually get out and walk.
Sure enough, as we reached a major overlook with a
nice trail, the rain backed off, and we took a stroll in that wonderful red dirt that (if
you walk in it enough) stains your shoes and socks and marks you as a desert
rat. There, we were blessed with the familiar junipers and desert wildflowers, some with raindrops. Not to mention an occasional caterpillar.
After
I finally relented and quit suggesting that we walk to just one more bend in
the trail, we returned to the car and headed off along the rim that marks the
boundary of the plateau, overlooking Grand Junction. There were too many
sights, too many overlooks to count, and I think I wore out everyone’s patience
with my wish to stop everywhere, see everything. But my partner and friend were wonderfully patient, and I got
to soak up a lot of desert energy—sometimes while dodging rain drops.
At one point, near the "coke oven" rocks below, I nearly headed off down a trail that would take me from the rim to the bottom of the valley—and, presumably, back up to meet the others. But as I unbuckled my seat belt to jump out, my partner gently reminded me that I’m still trying to nurse various injuries back to good health. A long climb down a cliff might not be helpful in that regard. So I whimpered a minute and relented. Next time. Because by now, I’d decided I’d like to come back.
 |
| Site of the local naturalization ceremony |
It
kept on raining, so we decided to forgo the adventures beyond the Monument and catch lunch in
Fruita (pop.
~13,000, plus lots of mountain bikers). As we drove there, my local friend told
us the story of the restaurant where we’d eat. It’s a pizza place, run by two
lesbians. They had been in a different location, but their landlord refused to
renew their lease because they were lesbians. So the town of Fruita, the funky premier mountain biking destination near the start of the famous Kokopelli Trail, rose up in protest
and found them a new place. The restaurant, the Hot Tomato,
features excellent pizza made with home-made dough and assorted typical and
exotic toppings. The atmosphere was some combination of laid back and abuzz—fitting,
I guess for mountain bikers at the edge of world-class trails. After lunch, we
headed back to Junction and took a walk along the river, hoping to see a
mother owl and her baby in a nest, but they
seemed to have vacated the premises since our friends saw them a few days earlier.
 |
| Hot Tomato restaurant, Fruita |
That
evening, after chilling out for a while, we had dinner with our friends again,
the conversation again wandering from the profound to the humorous, crashed for
the night with the rain still falling on and off. The next day, we drove home,
with my red rock itch scratched for a bit and memories of a really fine couple
of days. A good part of that was the especially nice time we had with our
friends. And it was also about how unexpectedly satisfying the trip to Colorado
National Monument had been.
I
realize that I missed it all those years largely because I assumed it wasn’t the real thing, wasn’t ‘good enough’ to spend time
with when Utah was just down the road. I just knew that the canyons wouldn’t be
big enough, the hikes not long enough, the solitude not deep enough, the desert
sun not hot enough to match Utah. But there it was—a lovely day with beautiful
views, sweet flowers, and hikes yet to be taken. The lesson isn’t hard to discern:
how many things do I miss, I wonder, by dismissing them as ‘not enough,’ not the
‘real thing’? When in reality, they are plenty wonderful in their own right—not
as faint shadows of something else, but as their own, unique experiences.
It
seems like a good time to work at being more alert and less … um … dismissive. It’s
true that aging brings shifting criteria for what’s reasonable. Yet I know that there are lots of wonderful experiences left in the world that fit just
fine within those limits—as long as I’m not weighing everything against the criteria
of my hyper-intense, hyper-athletic youth, automatically declaring anything that's different to be automatically less.
Who
knows what I might avoid missing if I keep my eyes open and my judgments packed away. It could be monumental.
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
No comments:
Post a Comment