The why

River Driftwood

Zion National Park

A battered old stump, polished after it's long trip down the river canyon from banging on the rocks. How's that for a metaphor?

Something drove me to do the Subway hike I spoke of in the last post. Not just the hike itself, but the unsettling need to do it now. Not wait until next year, or next time. This was the time.

I'm not a religious man or someone who believes in a higher power. I'm happy for those who do, and jealous of the peace it brings them, but I can't seem to latch onto that thought. My peace comes from a different source. It started the first time Denise and I visited the west and has grown stronger with each trip and each year that passes.

Maybe it's just the distance from home or the difference in the scenery, but I find that just about the only time I'm really in touch with my thoughts is when I'm alone with the red rocks of the west. It's too simple to call it being at peace, it's more than that. It's a time and a feeling of being somewhere I belong.

I truly believe, deep down and sincerely, that the rocks talk to me when I'm with them, and that they listen when I talk back to them. They share their knowledge with me and make me a better person. Being with them alone in the wilderness, or walking among them on this river hike was the reason I had to go. To think through some things, and to get the rocks advise.

Some sit in a church, or a temple, or a mosque. I sit on a rock.

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The where and the how

This isn't the best picture I've ever taken, but to me, it's the most important one. Not because of the image, or the light, or anything I can show you.

 

This is the story of what it took, of the where, and of the how.

 

The Subway

Zion National Park

This spot is in the Zion National Park wilderness and is called the Subway. It's carved out by the rush of the small river over ions of time into the two canyon walls and now appear to be a tunnel through them. It's a place not visited much. The park service only gives out permits for a maximum of 40 people a day, and the day I went there, only five.

I first heard about the Subway a couple of years ago and have since studied pictures of it, read about it many times, and found out just how special it could be.

To get to it, would mean a nine mile hike through the canyon and up the river. That's what the stories tell you, but they don't come close to telling it all. I realize that even a nine mile walk on a sidewalk to someone old and fat like me would is a challenge, but I figured if I took my time and kept things at my pace, I would be OK.

How stupid I was.

I started off in the dark with only my head-lamp to show me the way along a nice level trail over the mesa for the first half mile or so; came to the edge of what I had read was a steep descent into the canyon, and just stood there in awe and fear of what this really meant. I don't know how far it really was down to the river below, but to me it looked like thousands of feet into an abyss down what could not have been called a trail anywhere east of the Mississippi. It was so steep that at times I felt like I was just stumbling and falling down the path rather than hiking down. But I was continuing. It couldn't get worse. Stupid move number two.

There was not a real path to follow, but only three miles of scrambling, climbing, pulling myself over boulders along the sides of the river, with no other way to go upstream because the walls of the canyon were so close that these obstacles blocked any other way of progress. The few easy patches of walking on the riverbank, few and short, were like little gifts. The cairns stacked by earlier hikers to show the way around particularly tough stretches became reasons to rejoice. It became three miles of doubting myself, and cursing the extra fat on my middle and the camera in the pack on my back.

Finally, five hours after I left the car in the dark, I got out my camera for the first time and made the image above. I stayed about half an hour, wanting to wait for different light than I had at the time, but consumed by the thought that if it took me this long to get here, how long would it take to get out and how soon dark was coming. I started back, hopping those same rocks, doubting myself with every one. My knees and ankles screaming at me, calling me every bad word they knew, joining me in my quest to just have it over. After what seemed like hours (wait, it was actually hours), we made it to the bottom of that climb out of the canyon, and had a decision to make.

I sat there on a rock, by this time barely able to move, and came to the realization that I could either make it up that climb or just sit there and die. It sounds dramatic, but those were the only two choices I felt I had at that time. It really wasn't much of a choice after all (drama again), so after a half hour or so, the three of us, knees, ankles, and I started up. At first I was telling them "go to that big rock 50 yards ahead and you get a break", then it was "go 25 yards", and eventually became "stop screaming at me and we'll stop in five". It took one-hour-and-forty-five minutes to get there, but we did it. We drug ourselves across that mesa top to the parking lot, twelve hours from when we started, where two of the others that passed by me on the way out, were without a doubt waiting to toss a coin to see who had to go back down the trail and see how the fat guy was doing.

I had made it, but why?

I have strong feelings about this, but need to think longer on them. As they say...........

Stay tuned in.



 

  


 

Another reason

Star Trails Over Grafton, Utah

I'm sitting at the airport waiting to come back from my selfish trip to Zion National Park.

A lot of time with just me and my rocks, and a lot of time to think. I'm not sure of my thoughts yet, and may put them down  here given a little time to sort them out.

But for now, here's something totally new for me, and something we just can't do at home. It's a rare night when we see a star, and never this many at one time.

Now the rocks have company. The  stars will probably be pulling me just as hard to come back.

The call gets louder

Shadow of the Watchman on the Towers of the Virgin

Zion National Park

In a couple of days I leave for a short trip to Zion National Park. It's something I've been looking forward to all summer, working long hours of extra work to help pay for.

It's probably just about the last thing I should be doing now, and I'm feeling very selfish for doing it. I've cancelled the trip in my own mind many times over in the last few weeks, but just keep going back to something that tells me I have to go. I'm not sure why.

I think the reality that I don't have many more of these trips in me might be the pull of this one. Pulling me to the rocks. Telling me I have to go.

I told you earlier that the rocks were calling. They're getting louder each day and I can't ignore them.


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