Southern Utah, the center of the cosmos

I first visited southern Utah about 40 years ago. More than half my life has been spent loving this dry, sandy, lonesome, breathtakingly gorgeous corner of the world. The red rock canyons and undulating slickrock flats of southern Utah are the places I imagine when I meditate, when I’m conjuring up a scene that evokes peace. Over the years, I’ve spent weeks deep in the backcountry there, hiking, biking, backpacking, and canoeing those canyons and mesas. More recently, I’ve added rafting to the list, along with shorter hikes, less freeze-dried food, and more time in towns than in tents. Still, after all these years, the sight of a sheer redrock cliff, shining black with desert varnish in the bright Utah sun soothes my soul, lowers my blood pressure, calms my mind.

Last weekend, my partner treated me to a Utah trip as a  birthday gift. As I considered what to say about this trip, I realized I have about a million topics I could talk about: the flowers, the cliffs, the folks I saw on the walk to Delicate Arch, the vegetation growing improbably in cracks in the slickrock, the changes in Moab since I first visited four decades ago, the changes in the weather over this 4-day weekend, my sadness at the things I can no longer do there, my delight at the things I can. Instead of choosing, I decided to share a few (or maybe a few dozen) pictures, along with sparse commentary. Longer discussion can wait for now.

We arrived late in the afternoon to a carpet of flowers growing out of the dry earth on the salty flats above the Colorado River outside Moab. The Utah state flower, the sego lily, was profuse, in standard white and rarer pink versions. The ubiquitous orange mallow (whose color matches the orange of the cliffs farther south, but not so much the dirt on these salt flats) was, well, everywhere.

 

                    

As we entered the Colorado River canyon above Moab, we were treated to beautiful views of the cliffs and the river in low evening light. The combination of red cliffs reflected in the reddish water that gives the river its name made the air feel amber. 

We cruised into Moab in time to get the full, over-stimulating experience of a formerly small, sleepy desert town turned into a full-scale congested 4-wheel-drive, OHV, mountain bike, and t-shirt shop tourist destination. I vented my self-righteous dismay, not seeing myself as a tourist at all, but instead as a long-time desert rat who felt like my wilderness was being overrun by these interlopers. Imagine my mortification the next morning when, dressing for a hike, I looked down to see that the light blue Nike swoop on my socks exactly matched my shirt. Color-coordinated sportswear, the ultimate sign of a tourist. Unbefitting a desert rat, for sure.

Vaguely humbled, I proceeded to reassert my station as an insider by playing tour guide as we wended our way through Arches National Park, en route to the day's hike. Through it all, the flowers continued to do their springtime-in-the-desert welcome.

                  

And then the walk to Delicate Arch, the iconic representation of Arches and of Utah (it's even on the license plate). So many gorgeous pictures of Delicate Arch have circulated over the years, it seems a bit outrageous for any normal human being to try her hand at capturing this unlikely fluke of nature. But undaunted, and despite less-than-ideal sun conditions, try I did.   

The most remarkable thing about Delicate Arch is that it stands alone, framing the La Sal Mountains to the east, with nothing but space on either side. Most arches form within huge walls, but the vicissitudes of wind and water carved this one out of one huge slab of sandstone. Astonishing. And astonishingly beautiful. You come upon it suddenly, as the trail emerges from behind a wall. The sight is stunning, even the many-th time you see it.

A short walk around the "bowl" below the arch brought a different view ... and looking backward, a view of people viewing me viewing the arch from beneath.

There are other arches in the neighborhood, too, some of them "pothole" arches formed by water erosion from above, some double arches that include both a pothole and its outlet through the face of a cliff, some angular, formed by sandstone slabs' falling away.

That evening, we had dinner in a restaurant up on the cliffs overlooking Moab. Across the valley, you can see the "portal" where the Colorado carves its way out of the valley formed by the Moab fault and runs onward toward Lake Powell, some distance downstream. It was getting cloudy by now, but still, the contrast between the sandstone cliffs and the greenery below (though not as stark as in bright sunlight) was a reminder of how much water it must take to make this desert verdant. Echoes of my "American West" class.

To finish off the day, we drove out to Dead Horse Point, an overlook above the Colorado River. By now, the clouds were rolling in, so the hoped-for spectacular sunset didn't materialize. But the view is spectacular by itself. Seeing the river from this perspective so highlights its prodigious power and the eons of time it took for these canyons to form. I found/find myself silenced by the thought.

The next morning, we decided to forgo another hike near (crowded) Moab to visit the Needles district of Canyonlands, the place where many of my fondest memories of the desert and most of my meditation imaginings are located. On the way, we stopped at Newspaper Rock, a panel of early Indian petroglyphs pecked into the desert vanish on a protected sandstone wall. 

As we stood there, gazing at the petroglyphs, a serious storm swept in, complete with thunder, lightning, and hail. I missed my chance to snap a picture of the hail piled up by the roadside, looking all the world like snow in the desert in May. But it was pretty fun anyway. That storm hung around all day, stifling our planned walk but making for beautiful vistas of the red cliffs, the slickrock flats, and the distant buttes through the storm. In the overcast sky, you could sometimes see the red of the land reflected in the clouds.

Despite the on-again, off-again rain, we managed to get out and walk around a bit, and we found more desert flowers there to greet us.

The next morning, we headed back to Colorado, driving up through the Colorado River canyon. The morning light on the east-facing cliffs and the flowers in the shade across the way provided a lovely farewell. 

How could you see this and not yearn to come back?

Our last night was spent in Glenwood Springs. I wanted to stop there so I could walk the South Canyon Fire memorial trail on Storm King Mountain, which I mentioned in an earlier blog. Unfortunately, Storm King lived up to its name, shrouded in rain and heavy clouds all day. Since I wouldn't be able to see what I came to see (not to mention the promise of a steep, mud-slimed trail), I postponed that hike to another day, already saved in my calendar. But in honor of the reason I want to go, we visited the monument to the young firefighters who died on Storm King in 1994. 

                                       

We drove home in a snowstorm. Later, we heard that Arapaho Basin got 7" of new snow that day, and chains were required on Vail Pass. Fortunately, we beat the worst of it, getting home in time to have breakfast out before my partner went to work at noon. No picture of that storm ... but lots of mind pictures of the trip.

Back home in Colorado—which, as you know, I love—I am already eager for another visit to Utah. My socks may match my shirt, but I remain, deep in my soul, a desert rat.

Palm Springs ... and the real desert nearby

As a long-time desert rat, I’m always excited to travel to hot, dry places (although the dry part is getting less appealing as my skin drifts toward the texture of parchment). So a trip to Palm Springs for one of my favorite annual conferences sounded doubly appealing.

bell hooks

The truth is that I usually spend conferences inside the hotel, except for an occasional dinner foray. So it generally doesn’t matter if it’s in Michigan or California in the winter, Florida or Aspen in the summer. But this time, for a change, I actually spent some time enjoying the locale.

First, the indoor part. This was a conference of the Association for Women in Psychology, a 1970s-born organization of feminist psychologists. The conversations tend to be rich, the conference sessions stimulating, and the humor a relief from the usual conference fare. It’s so satisfying to hang out with like-minded folks, to start from shared assumptions about women’s place in the world and then move forward from there. This beats all to heck the requirement that you first fight for that ground before you can talk about anything else. And with bell hooks as the keynote speaker, how can you go wrong?

After the conference, we stayed an extra day to spend time with friends whom we rarely see. The four of us decided to rent a car and drive from Palm  Springs (which held no particular appeal for this group) to Joshua Tree National Park. This was a great trip! What looked like maybe a 2-hour drive turned into 4 or 5 hours, as we stopped to take pictures and explore sights along the road. We also had some puzzles to figure out. The first was the rock formations. As a (very) amateur geology buff, I found these really intriguing. We speculated and guessed and watched for signs that would explain these odd rock piles—and then located a very clear description in the park brochure we were carrying with us (but apparently not reading too closely).

The next puzzle was the Joshua trees that give this place its name. These are a form of yucca, with the leaves/blades growing in clumps at the end of branches instead of growing individually on the ground. Some were huge, maybe 25–30 feet high, with many branches, sometimes at odd, twisted angles.

But others were (relatively) tiny, maybe a foot or two tall. These had a single central stalk with a bunch of leaves/blades on the end (instead of the many arms of the larger trees). We decided they were babies, but then speculated for a while about how fast they grow—a foot a year, 10 feet a year? Are these this year’s crop or are they from several years ago? Again, we found the answer when we thought to read the brochure. Joshua trees grow at the rate of one inch a year. One inch a year! So even these little ones are a decade or two old, and the big ones must be hundreds of years old. Think of what this means on a human scale—the big trees we were looking at were already around when the Declaration of Independence was signed. A reminder of the eye blink I mentioned the other day.

And then there was the desert itself. The Mojave: vast, dun-colored, with a wide, high sky, hot in summer (but just in the 80s the day we were there), seemingly barren—but, like most deserts, actually full of life. I love deserts. I have spent countless days in the red-rock country of southeastern Utah, exploring the canyons there. I’ve hiked, backpacked, road biked, mountain biked, canoed, rafted, and even 4-wheeled in that remarkable corner of the world. No place has the same hold on my soul as that area. Still, when we climbed out of the car to take a walk, I had this lovely feeling of being home in the dry, warm air, with the clean breeze, the clear sun, the sand and rocks and cacti. We saw a few creatures—a kit fox, some scrub jays, a lizard, and a bald eagle. And lots of people.

Despite the presumed collective wisdom of our group, we somehow forgot to take along sunscreen, hats, or enough food (“provisions,” we called it) to keep us fueled for the day. So, tallying our “compendium stupidium” (we created a substantial idiosyncratic vocabulary along the way), we decided it was best to cut our walk short and find a meal somewhere. In the tiny burg where we emerged from the park, the best option was Denny’s … not our best food of the trip, but it served our purpose just fine. We returned to Palm Springs and the hotel way too tired, but in a good way. It was a very different—and very welcome—way to finish off a conference.

Despite the deadly drudgery of getting through security at the Palm Springs airport, it was one of my favorite conference trips ever. Not because the conference was so stupendous, although it was good. But because of the really satisfying combination of the conference, good time with good friends, and a chance to spend some time in the open air of the desert. Any desert.