Bill's Views on Most Everything

 

I like to do solo trips in the Southeastern Utah canyon country.  I began going there in the 1950’s with my parents, then with friends, and by myself.  I go there for the scenery and for the solitude.

The tourism centered around Moab has made finding solitude more challenging, but the crowds of four wheelers, dirt bikers, mountain bikers, and other rabble tend to go to the same places, leaving vast areas empty.  Even in well-traveled areas all I need to do is walk about 1/4 mile and I am alone.

Bare rock, deep canyons, intense light, vertical spires, and the starkness leads me into myself.  My mind empties of the clutter of civilization.  I return refreshed and at peace.  My trips there are pilgrimages.

There also is the danger.  All the Park Service literature emphasizes safety.  Traveling with others, taking the proper equipment, having communications, carrying water, and leaving an itinerary are all good advice.  I carry water and the 10 essentials along with nylon cord, a trowel, and a poncho or space blanket.  Sometimes I travel with others.

 

I go into slot canyons, climb over the ridge to the next canyon where the cattle could not go, follow winding canyons to the pourover that stops me, scramble up to the rim, and ramble in the slickrock.  I look for ruins of the people who lived, hunted, and farmed here.  They left pictographs on those stone walls that tell of the hunt, of the gods.  Life must have been hard, but they were surrounded by beauty, and they had time for art.

 

 

I especially like the slickrock.  Entrada sandstone, ancient sand dunes turned to stone, it has a sensual feel.  There are rounded humps, steep drops, curves and hollows, and those inviting bowls.  The bowls are the best.  In the couple of weeks after a rain they hold enough water to support life.  Tadpoles, water striders, and other insects have a brief time in the sun until the water dries up and they go dormant.  I like to drink from them when the water is fresh.

 

 

The bowls range in size from a few inches to hundreds of feet in diameter.  The larger ones have a sandy bottom, sometimes with desert vegetation.  Other bowls have an outlet, a crack or joint in the rock that is wide enough for an exit.  Many are true bowls, no outlet, with steep, smooth sides.

What is it about boys and holes in the ground?  We just want to go into them.   I do, often without a thought about how I am going to get out.  More than once I have found myself in trouble.

 

One time I was in the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park.  There is a challenging four wheel drive over Elephant Hill; a misnomer because the hill is solid rock.  I camped at Devil’s Kitchen, an area where each campsite is under a sandstone overhang.  The view is across a park to the pinnacles surrounding Chesler Park, a magical place.

Everyone goes to Chesler Park, so the area around the campsites is little-traveled.  I climbed around for a while, seeking the high points to look west across the Colorado River to the spires and cliffs of the Maze District.  It’s a panorama of varying shades of red rock, tilted and broken into fins and spires that should exist only in the imagination, but there they are.

Hiking a bit farther east, I came across one of those bowls, a big one.  I climbed down to the sandy bottom, admiring the grasses that manage to survive in that dry place.  Rain runs off the rock and waters the edges of the sandy bottom promoting more growth there.  I looked around and thought, “I wonder if I can get out of here?”

My standard strategy is to walk up the sides of the bowl using the friction of my shoes.  Too steep.  I tried a running start.  Failed.  I went as high as I could standing, then scrambled on all fours, feet slipping and using my knees as well. By that time I was worried.  No cell phone service there, so I was on my own.  It took several tries, losing some skin and good blue denim, but there is no skeleton in that bowl.  I will go back, but plan to stay out of the bowls.