Approaching sanity

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Evening light on the Colorado River above Moab

All summer, I’ve been expecting to write a blog about the trip I just took—a hiking adventure in Capitol Reef, a lesser-known national park in Southern Utah. I’ve written before about how much I love this corner of the world—I even referred to it as “the center of the cosmos.” Capitol Reef is a distinctive place relative to, say, Arches and Canyonlands—more lush, with the Fremont River at its center, higher in elevation, making for cooler temperatures overall, and more remote. The closest “city,” Green River (pop ~1000), is about 100 miles away. I hadn’t been to Capitol Reef for years, and my wish to hike the Frying Pan Canyon trail, a favorite walk there, was one incentive for the “return to fitness” program that framed much of my summer. If you missed that part of the story, I spent an uncharacteristically sedentary winter recovering, gently, from some late summer knee and hip crises. The lack of activity was bad for me, body and mind. So my summer project was to regain the physical well-being that has been a central part of my life—and I wasn't certain that I'd be able to do that, aging being what it is. So, not too surprisingly, the blog I expected to be a rousing celebration of my big hike became something else as well—a reflection on the slow arrival of acceptance, the (sorely belated) ability to, as the Beatles urged, let it be.

Cliffs and cottonwood along the
Fremont River entering Capitol Reef

The rounded sandstone formations that give
"Capitol Reef" its name

Not that the trip wasn’t blog-worthy in its own right. The soft evening light on the Colorado River above Moab, the deep morning shade contrasting with the sunlight glancing off the red rock formations along Wall Street trail in Arches, the early-fall light on the cliffs entering Capitol Reef, the cottonwoods slowly turning golden, and the vast expanses of the San Rafael Swell and the Water Pocket Fold, grand geology on display. It felt perfect for this hike, which had been in my plans for months. And the walk itself was, as I'd recalled, wonderfully varied and welcoming and gorgeous.

Chimney Rock. A day-before-the-big-hike
walk took me to the plateau above this spire

In concrete terms, my aim on this trip was to hike from the campground at Capitol Reef up into and then through Cohab Canyon (so named, legend has it, because early Mormons who “cohatited”—i.e., lived in polygamous families—retreated to this high, hidden canyon when the feds came calling), climb out of Cohab and drop into Frying Pan Canyon (so named, according to local stories, because the very exposed trail gets so hot), and finally out of Frying Pan and across the slickrock plateau to Cassidy Arch (named for Butch Cassidy, who hung out in these parts with his pal, the Sundance Kid).

Overlooking the Water Pocket Fold,
a vast monocline that gave white settlers fits

At a more profound (and less visible) level, my aim was to be capable of taking a long hike in the desert I love, on a trail I that remembered as gorgeous but that I hadn’t hiked for years—and, most importantly, to do that feeling strong and relaxed enough to genuinely enjoy the walk. I had prepared for that all summer, following a remarkably (for me) sane and flexible exercise plan. And now I'd see how well it paid off, what limits remain even after all that.

The weathered Navajo sandstone walls of Cohab Canyon

Looking back down into Cohab

The summer produced many small pleasures on my way back to hikability. Interestingly (to me), none of them had to do with pushing through exhaustion or enduring painful exercise, as would have been my tendency earlier in life. Instead, they came from backing off when pain suggested a problem, turning back from a long walk when a bee sting threatened an allergic reaction or thunder signaled lightening nearby, accepting with equanimity the unavoidable schedule changes that spoiled my workout plans. I told myself, many times, “Don’t be stupid, Janis”—and I stopped the painful exercise on the spot, let go of the anxiety about the abandoned workout, and traded a planned walk for access to my epipen or to shelter from the lightening. And, remarkably (to me, at least) I felt fine about these moments, totally content. Maybe even wise. 

This sense of peace was entirely a matter of perspective. For reasons I don’t fully understand, I found myself not obsessing over these things but calmly aware that what I wanted was to be fit enough to enjoy a hike like the one I had planned. I wasn’t trying to show off, to be best at anything. Achieving this specific weight room success, making it to that aerobics class, or completing a particular walk didn’t really matter. What I cared about was the slow, gradual progress toward being well again.

A local goblin on the plateau beyond Frying Pan Canyon

The final experience that confirmed my tectonic shift in attitude came on the day of my long-planned hyper-hike, when I faced a moment that would have seemed intolerable in years past: I actually couldn’t find the trail junction that would take me to the end-point of the hike I had planned, Cassidy Arch. I hunted for the junction for a long time, walking hither and yon, up and down, until I realized I was getting dangerously tired for someone with a serious return hike yet to come. I said to myself, “Don’t be stupid, Janis.” And I started the long trek back to the trailhead where I started. I had done what I set out to do—had a wonderful, long hike in the desert I love. I’d walked far enough to have reached the end-goal arch (and then some)—just not entirely in the right direction. And I got back to my car feeling happy and strong, satisfyingly tired. Exactly what I had hoped for to close the summer. Sure, I was a bit disappointed (I really wanted a picture of Cassidy Arch), but it was really fine. My summer is happily complete.

Morning sunlight along the Wall Street trail in Arches,
where I was welcomed by the cascading song of a canyon wren

I don’t quite know how to explain the transformation I’m trying to describe here, from super-jock intensity (out to prove something?) to this delightful acceptance of the limits imposed by reality. I think it was  at least partly this: The very real possibility of not ever being able to take such a hike again seriously heightened my awareness of my age and of the realities of my aging body. That insistent striving for more (even for excess) that seemed so important earlier in my life suddenly looked so pointless when I was faced with losing so much. As I drove through Southern Utah, everyday sights—familiar rock formations, ordinary plants, simple ripples in the stream—were suddenly strikingly beautiful. When I took a short walk early one morning in Arches and heard a canyon wren, a tear sprung to my eye. I threw out my arms and sighed at the sheer, deep pleasure of just being there. “There,” where I hadn’t been sure I'd be able to go again. One night, I lay on my back gazing up at the Milky Way and saw a shooting star course across the desert sky; my heart smiled ear to ear. Those experiences were somehow linked directly to this new level of acceptance, this shift in perspective that I sometimes dare to call “wisdom.” Grandiose, maybe, but closer to “wise” than I’ve been in my past, for sure.

Being sufficiently old and physically compromised to contemplate the loss of things that are so valuable to me—my physicality and my access to wilderness—granted me a new perspective. A canyon wren makes my heart sing, and missing a long-awaited trail junction at the end of a very long hike is of no import. Huge and tiny are so relative as to be meaningless. Now that’s a lesson in perspective.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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