Desert Healing

The red rock desert of South-Central Utah is a land of barrenness and beauty, harshness and healing.

The barrenness is what makes it beautiful: clean lines and contours to the horizon, dusky palette under a brilliant turquoise sky, heat shimmering off of sunlit sand and coolness pooling in shadowed canyons. Here and there, the scurry of a lizard, the cackle of a raven. Scent of sage. Blinding moon or Milky Way at night, a universe worth of light unimpeded by trees or urban glow. All the true desert solitaire one could desire.

Within that barrenness, pockets of greenness: forested plateaus studded with ponderosa and sparkling with small subalpine lakes. Cottonwood- and willow-lined washes, rustling with leaves and laughing in ephemeral streams. Best of all, hanging gardens: canyon walls carpeted with moss and fern, seemingly emanating straight from stone. Unexpected gifts.

Other unexpected gifts: the occasional shock-red paintbrush or claret-cup cactus. Heat heat heat broken by the rush of cool air preceding a monsoon storm. The unique sense of peace that settles in after a cloudburst, rock steaming and dripping, potholes brimming with rainfall, dry washes running, birds singing the desert awake. Birds singing the desert to sleep. Shooting stars. 

The harshness is what allows for healing. Building thirst, hunger, and fear create space for relief. Satisfaction if not satiation with the most basic aspects of being alive: gratitude for the shade of a lonely juniper against the midday sun. Joy of a slight trickle of water after days and miles of dry sand and empty potholes. A thousand anxieties -- will a ridge be passable, will a rattlesnake strike, just how hopelessly and irrevocably lost am I? -- resolve into a feeling of relief and security once they've passed.

If they pass.

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The marvel of deserts -- and all wild places -- is that they don't care about individual human lives. It doesn't matter to them what we feel or want, what we seek or find. They just go on being deserts. Or mountains. Or tundra. (True, true, humans as a collective are changing all of the planet, but even then, I take the geologic view that the planet will be fine in the long run, no matter what happens to our single, lonely, rash and irrational specie.)

The Painted Desert never cared that I loved it. The Adirondacks never cared that I hated them. It didn't matter to Alaska's Arctic whether I lived or died. Places can't be kind. Places can't be cruel. Rocks and rivers and trees and wildlife don't consciously decide what to do with whatever poor or quite happy lost soul wanders off across or through or under or near them.

That indifference is freeing. Places are what we make of them, what experiences we have and how we interpret them. People are so much more ridiculously complex, such bundles of determination and desire and emotion and irrationality. People can be kind, yes, but people can be cruel. Deliberately so. That whole consciousness thing, self-awareness, free will.

Give me a rockfall or a rattlesnake any day.

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Things I've always wanted: a puppy, a truck. To feel happy. To feel free.

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I have a puppy. I have a truck. The truck is able to get us places that I couldn't reach with my previous vehicle, a noble but very low clearance Subaru. Puppy reminds me to be safe and reasonable and to stop every now and then to play.

We're seeing all the places that I should have gone to last year, and get to marvel at now. The canyons of Grand Staircase-Escalante, the plateaus of Dixie National Forest. Cottonwood Canyon Road, with the spectacular view of Grosvenor Arch and the Cockscomb; narrows just as marvelous for their tight, tall walls but comfortable enough for a puppy and a claustrophobe.

Hole-in-the-Rock Road, with a series of spurs to explore. True slot canyons, plus windswept washes and natural bridges. Dinosaur tracks. Soooooooo many miles of washboard.

"The Box" section of Box-Death Hollow Wilderness, with the cool waters of Pine Creek gurgling steadily through the several hundred-feet deep gorge they'd carved into the Navajo Sandstone. A near-perfect campsite under a bright quarter moon, marred only by the many cacti and a pervasive fear of mountain lions.

And climbing -- not only can I get to Cedar Canyon or the Jungle on the Aquarius Plateau within an hour or two, but I'm actually able to go climbing, whenever I can convince others to join me. Puppy and I can go wherever we want, do whatever we want. I'm living my own life again.

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Once upon a time, I used to go to deserts (and mountains and tundra) seeking the edge of peril, looking for that mix of thirst and quenching, hunger and satiation, fear and joy. I wouldn't say I deliberately put myself at risk (well, aside from Gates of the Arctic), but I certainly wasn't seeking the easy route. I wanted challenges. Type II fun. And always just soldiered on through any discomfort or danger.

With puppy, I have to be far more aware of just how hot it is and how many treats I have in my pack, whether there are unsurmountable cliffs up ahead. Water, I carry lots of water. 

This erodes at my freedom (i.e. no solo canyonneering in the near future), but is more likely to keep me alive (i.e., no solo canyoneering in the near future.) Instead of aimlessly seeking barrenness and harshness, I have to plan ahead, focus on the comforts as well as the beauty. It's a different type of healing -- one I've never tried before -- distinguished by views out across the high plateaus or Grand Staircase, from the seat of a reliable truck. A mattress in the camper bed and shorter, shadier walks. Rolling in sand. A black and white blur trying to herd lizards and tumbleweeds, followed by a furry lump curled up on the sleeping bag, softly snoring. Belly rubs, all the belly rubs. 

I think she's happy? Then, I am, too.