The Afternoon Ride

Originally Published April 28, 2022

Today's ride in Bryce Canyon will be remembered as if in a dream. Where the Grand Canyon is vast and unknowable, Bryce is intimate, personal, almost biomorphic in its presence. We wound down steep trails to the canyon floor. The creak of the saddle, the horse's exhale, hooves finding their footing, only silenced when we came to a halt to take in the view.

The horses were from Mexico, the mules from Kentucky, the wranglers from everywhere. Ours, Kyra, just of high school, was from Montana. Her last job for an outfitting company, they would leave her out in the wilderness for days. Grizzlies? Yes, lots. Bear spray? No, she said, 45 long barrel, but they really don’t bother you.

Edward Abbey has written best about the experience of the west, and while his post was in Arches National Monument, it applies throughout the canyon lands.

"Sand, sage or old man sage, a lustrous windblown blend of silver and blue and aquamarine, gleams in the distance, the feathery stems flowing like hair. Purple flowers no bigger than your fingernail are half-revealed, half concealed by the shining leaves. Purple sage: crush the leaves between thumb and finger and you release that characteristic odor, pungent and bittersweet, which means canyon country, high lonesome mesaland, the winds that blow from far away."

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

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Desert Solitaire

Originally Published May 8, 2022

There’s no place we’ve been that Edward Abbey hasn’t been before.   Desert Solitaire chronicles his time spent as a ranger in Arches National Monument along with warnings about “industrial tourism.”  It is the introduction of “machines” into the wilderness that concerns him; the campers, trucks, motorboats, motorbikes, jet skis, etc., along with the infrastructure required to support them.  He has a reasonable alternative.  Rather than spending millions on development, have the National Park Service provide, free of charge, shuttle buses, horses, mules and guides, and allow people to explore wilderness in its natural state.  This is the sort of proposal subject to accusations of “socialism,” and was, as we now know, easily ignored.

A second force about which he was prescient was the flooding of Glen Canyon to harness the Colorado for electrical power and water rights, all under the guise of giving the public access to water based recreation in the form of Lake Powell, now revealed as a Sisyphean effort, as the Glen Canyon reaches its “dead pool” level, and the marinas have been moved far from their “lakeside” motels.

Mule Days

A bright spot in all of this was the Bryce Canyon Mules Days Rodeo.  Mules, the height of equinedom, or equinimity if you prefer, were on display doing all the things that horses generally do, but with maximum chill and insouciance.  A cross between a horse and and donkey, they bring out the best in each while leaving the less attractive and frustrating traits far behind.  It is a genetic accident of the highest order, which once discovered, has been cultivated by mule lovers from George Washington to the U.S. Army.

Mormonism

One of the things about traveling in Utah is both the invisibility and pervasiveness of the Mormons.  The overwhelming presence of the tourists obscures the fact that the Mormons own and inhabit practically everything outside the parks.  Their community, from the more isolated and often polygamist families, to the mainstream Mitt Romney types, determines much of the culture and politics of Utah.

To give a sense of the determination, dedication and perseverance of the Mormons, there is the story of  the Hole in the Rock.  

In 1880, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints commissioned a group of Mormons to establish a new settlement in the southeast corner of the state.  Two hundred Mormons, men women and children, with livestock and twenty-six wagons, set out, and after traveling seventy miles, came to an impassable drop off two thousand feet above the Colorado River.  Rather than turning back, they blasted and hammered a notch, the “hole in the rock,” and continued to construct a series of switchbacks down to the river.  Wagons had  to be lowered with ropes.  When they finally reached the river and forded to the other side, they faced circumstances nearly as difficult. The trip took four months and the trail that they had carved was never used again.

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Arrivals

Originally Published May 21, 2022

Thirty-six hours, two states a day, a dizzying experience. The landscape changes dramatically, softening as we move east. No longer the red bluffs, the impossibly blue sky, the stoic junipers, our eyes adjust from the desert to the emergent green of Colorado. We lumber up mountain passes, flying down the other side, RV's and semis speeding by. And then we are in Nebraska, soft, sweet, and dreamy.

The southwest landscape seems abandoned, largely uninhabited.  A cattle ranch might signal a custodial presence, but human habitation is incidental. Small towns could blow away. Some nearly have.  Gas pumps are gone, storefronts are empty, siding is missing. Nature is dominant. Civilization holds on dimly.

Eastward a cultivated landscape appears, boundaries are delineated, planting patterns weave across gentle drumlins. Hills are cut, filled, and moved as convenient. Signs of human presence are everywhere, largely in the trace of large, agricultural equipment. 

As we cross the Mississippi, suddenly all seems tired, plowed under one too many times. Signs of abandoned nineteenth century industry remain. Roads maneuver through more complex land holdings. We move from town to town, sprawling industrial suburbs to city centers, counties no longer matter.

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We spent our first night in a sprawling Walmart Parking lot, next to a truck stop. Peering out the window. Are they moving toward us? The next night another Walmart, this time off the highway, a bucolic view out our window as we have our morning tea and depart for the next ten hour drive. Our last night, in western Pennsylvania, parked in the Amish horse and carriage area, we emerged into the evening humidity of spring. Like stepping off the airplane in the tropics in the middle of winter. The west is so dry and dusty that on our last days our noses blew red, our eyes ached, our skin felt like sandpaper.

The sunset in the west is long and the sky infinite. The afterglow extends 360 degrees around the horizon. Cool blues and purples complement the setting sun. As we move east we see the soft yellow light of the setting sun against a warm cloudy sky. All seems historical, like a Thomas Cole or Fitz Hugh Lane painting.

Familiar again.

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Our trip home was all anticipation. We arrived late Saturday night to surprise Jess and Carter, expectant parents, who then headed to the hospital the next morning to give birth to young Augustus "Augie" Byron Roberts.

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