Although spending this past weekend down in the big city wasn’t necessarily planned as a training exercise for this week’s jaunt into red rock country, in many respects it unfolded as such.
Where, no doubt, there’ll be, as there always are in the spring, perfectly situated water holes pocked into the trailside slickrock down south, a Salt Lake watering hole of mirage proportions served a similar function to satisfy the overpowering thirst of our somewhat renegade posse last Friday and Saturday nights.
We showed up, of course, to witness Hebertown’s very own Barfly Wranglers taking the stage for a two-night stand at the Stateroom as opening act for Reckless Kelly and as an oasis for hydration and the musical arts, it certainly served.
And when taking into account the sheer amount of dance-floor mileage accrued, moderate trekking into the Canyonlands should prove well within reach. After negotiating the urban concrete canyons, meandering through the convoluted slot and plateau country should provide a singular rapture of its own.
Where, over the weekend, checking out “The Continuing Allure: Painters of Utah’s Red Rock” at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts provided an aesthetic endorphin rush, going to the source of the modernist interpretations of Maynard Dixon, Edgar Payne, Conrad Buff, and assorted others will allow us an impressionistic reality all our own.
And tent camping in the gorgeous barren “wastelands” always carries a signature vocabulary that is hard to acquire in a downtown motel. There’s something about tossing back the flaps (which, like the door to a “hogan” always faces east) and crawling out to greet the dawn and rustle up some spiritually-enhanced coffee.
One of the selected hikes on the agenda is a ten-miler that Ed Abbey navigated and then wrote about quite humorously and, of course, quite seriously back in the day. I suppose that in the interest of “truth in advertising” as to the rigorousness of the endeavor, I should mention that he took his then 9-year-old daughter along.
It was his way of helping to prove the point that blasting a road along the route wasn’t all that necessary if viewing the vista at the end of the trail was the goal. Of course they could bulldoze the cottonwood bottomland within the canyon if winding among the boulders, descending from ledge to ledge, and crossing a few sand beds before climbing back up to the plateau on the far side proved too arduous.
The views from the cairn-marked trail ought to be rather spectacular if blue sky asserts itself. There should be one or two snow-capped laccolithic mountain ranges on opposing horizons and, far to most every compass point, reminders in exposed Entrada or Wingate or Navajo or Moenkopi sandstone of desert wanderings from my relatively distant past.
And, hopefully, there will be sightlines to various spires, fins, hoodoos, mesa tops, buttes, arches, natural bridges, and balanced rocks that will, in the future, be pointed out as locales of further high adventures in slickrock country. So many canyons! So little time!
Actually there is a particular arch within the area in question that I’ve yet to bag except by telephoto lens. Although the bang for the buck would be extraordinary, it’s quite possible the physical expenditure might well be beyond my current means. Maybe I could pull it off with a contingent of desert Sherpas and a few of Hannibal’s elephants.
Admittedly, as is the case quite often among those who spend winters in the mountains, my desert yearning is most pronounced come springtime. From Indian paintbrush to cliffrose, from sego lilies to evening primrose and claret cup cacti in bloom, canyon country flora has become a drug. You might want to give the jimsonweed a wide berth, however.
I’ve even come to love the translucent scorpions that emerge from campfire deadfall and the tiny kangaroo mice that, when cornered, charge like a bull. But, more so, it’s the great blue heron on the wing or the broad-tailed hummingbird having its way with a scarlet penstemon, or the ever-present turkey buzzard lazily riding a thermal.
Speaking of the buzzard, it’s a well known fact that Ed Abbey instantly morphed into one upon his death. The solitude suited him, I suppose.
What is it about the southeastern-Utah desert that feeds our higher planes of consciousness and soothes both our left and right brains to such a degree? It’s like that big old rock that sat perched high-up near Abbey’s old Park Service trailer in Arches. It’s balanced!
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.