We are the condensations of spirit, sanctified sweat dripping from brows of sacred mountains. We are avatars of Solitude, hymns to Beauty, paeans to Misunderstanding. We are weary of ourselves, our failures. We play Atlas to the burdens of our insatiable longings and the weight of the consuming glory we have beheld but cannot express. Kyrie eleison; exaudi nos; miserere nobis.
Tom and I attempted a hike Saturday. We drove up Old Stage Road out of the Springs, which is an unpaved forest road. It was a bit icy. We drove for quite a bit, maybe ten miles(?) before turning off another forest road to get to the trailhead. It was a bit rougher than the main road. We only drove about a quarter mile when we encountered a large pool filled with ice and water. For whatever testosterone-prompted reason, we attempted to cross it and, well, failed. The pool was very deep and the right front tire wasn't even touching the bottom. We looked at each other in disbelief before piling out Tom's side. I had to put all my clothes on including my wind/rain shell because it was so windy and cold. We attempted various methods of providing traction, all to no avail. We even tried jacking up the jeep to put rocks/gravel under the back tire, with disastrous results. After the tire was in the air, the jack started to shift and I called out. Tom got out of the way just as the jack fell over and the jeep slid closer to the pool. Tom checked the cell phone. No service. We kept at it until, suddenly, the heavens parted and an angel named Christine in a Nissan Xterra with a lift kit came bounding down the road bearing shackles and a snatch strap. We were out in about 15 minutes.
After the debacle took some of the wind out of our sails, we decided to keep it short and hike down to a nearby lake/reservoir. Here are a few unspectacular snapshots I took with my little Nikon point-and-shoot. (The picture of the fox is from when we were still near the Broadmoor neighborhood just before starting up Old Stage Road.)
Kane Gulch, November 25, 2007
I have been estranged from the desert, the red-rock country of southeastern Utah, since the autumn of 2006. It rained on me then as I lay alone in my tent before dawn in Owl Canyon nervously listening for sounds of flash flooding, and later that morning as I climbed out, covered by an awkward poncho, yet still damp and miserable, a tiny organism in the vastness of the Grand Gulch Plateau where hundreds and even thousands of years earlier, ancient puebloan peoples would have huddled together under alcoves and inside tiny adobe rooms that are now the many ruins I saw among the cliffs in those canyons.
Today, we were reunited. Kane Gulch begins as a nondescript cow pasture that opens and descends gently into the canyon. It is typical of canyon country with soaring cliffs, arches, windows, red slickrock, et al. “Typical” by no means suggests ordinary or uninspiring. The spirit of the desert cannot be described and quantified by mere land formations; it is in the dry air and deep polarized blue of the sky, the aroma of sage, the sway of the tamarisk in the wind, the cold feel of mammoth boulders in the creek bed, the morning shadows on vermillion cliffs, the history of prehistoric peoples who lived here and the vagabonds and misfits who found solace, beauty, and adventure here.
Several interesting waypoints can be found in the first five miles of Kane Gulch. Junction ruin, a small grouping of cliff dwellings positioned in an impossible-looking location in an alcove, can be found at the junction of Grand and Kane Gulches. Stimper Arch is located exactly at the five-mile point and isn’t magnificent compared to others I’ve seen, but was a nice destination nonetheless. The real gem of the canyon is Turkey Pen Ruin which sits in a vast bend in the canyon and consists of two levels of dwellings. Tucked against the canyon wall are the remains of several single-storied dwellings, many of them in fairly good shape with roofs and the vigas intact. A partially excavated kiva was here as well as a “turkey pen”, or the remains of a free-standing room apart from the cliff with vertical sticks and branches which would have stabilized the inside of the adobe-covered wall. The second level, a high alcove, contained more substantial ruins but it was closed to access due to a recent rockslide. The dwellings had become too fragile to approach closely. There was a plethora of rock art, both pictographs and petroglyphs hundreds of years apart. The dwellings were supposedly 800 years old, although some of the rock art, I believe, was dated to the ninth century(?). There were more ancient corn cobs here than I have ever seen, and lots of potsherds, a few bones, and other artifacts.
We ate lunch at the ruin before rounding the corner to see Stimper Arch and then climbing back out of the canyon. We saw only one other couple—backpackers on their way out—the entire day, and that was in the morning. The remoteness was palpable and, for me, very welcome. The desert, in my experience, offers what the mountains cannot, and that is barren, sweeping desolation, the epitome of impossible beauty, a vastness with a gravity so immense it could almost swallow a passing human soul.
"Again I am in the desert--the desert that I know--red sand, cedars, great spaces, distant mesas..." - Everett Ruess, 1932
We encountered some snow and ice here and there.
Morning shadows in the canyon.
Deeper into the canyon.
What looked like an arch was disconnected at the top.
The "Watchtower" at Turkey Pen Ruin. There are "peep holes" positioned inside the structure, strategically placed to view crucial points in the canyon.
The two levels of ruins: you can see the ones on the first level behind Kathy, and the watchtower at the upper right. More lay in the alcove behind the camera. The "Turkey Pen" can be seen at bottom middle.
The watchtower at Turkey Pen Ruin.
Some pictographs at the lower ruins.
The watchtower from a ways back into the Canyon.
A collage of some of the rock art we discovered at Turkey Pen Ruin.
Stimper Arch, where we turned around. This trail alone continues for miles and miles, probably filling at least a week of backpacking.
Immutable
I know the impossible like I know the
Coldcracked air in my lungs
Snapping vessels that taste of blood and
Sun
That drips from your eyelash
Splashing into salty forevers
Returning void after ceaseless void—
Yet still I reach—
Whispering prayers in forty languages
Weeping over water that
Bludgeons light-bruised stones
Apparently locally famous for its gold-medal waters, the South Platte River winds through Cheesman Canyon, a mecca for fly fishermen. They were out in spades on this beautiful, 70+ degree November day. I went for a 8-9 mile "spontaneous" hike there on saturday morning, having seen the trailhead from Highway 67 about an hour out of Woodland Park. Can you hear the tires squealing and the brakes slamming when I saw the sign?
Although, I wonder how much there is to say, really, when you are a dutiful cog in this machine. Or that machine, depending on where you are or what shift you are working. It is, of course, the beast. It is the graven image. It is the subterranean dynamo upon which the crust of western hemisphere existence sprawls from sea to shining sea. But duty is noble. Is it not. Is not it. It is not. We turn in shifts, Comrades, we turn in shifts. I am below with the swelter-tongue, oil-tang stench for nine hours and then surface, numb, sticky, and disoriented into the light, while your eyes are just starting to adjust to the world for what it really is. But not for too long! God help us if we see for too long what the world really is. What it really is. How would the machine run then, Comrades? What would become of us then? Rice bowls and distended stomachs, that’s what. And what to do with all those clocks. In every form imaginable. So you take your place behind the levers just as I am squinting, staggering up from the shafts, paying my fees at the door before I lumber off to lick my wounds and spend my earnings on whatever nepenthe will comfort, distract. As I lie whimpering, sniveling over some inconsequential gash that won’t, for God’s sake, won’t stop bleeding. For numbness is life. Numbness is the petrol, the calories, Comrades. It is what the gaping maw of the beast requires. That and our progeny. This is why it is imperative, Comrades, absolutely imperative that you train them up in the doctrine we now profess and hold dear. That doctrine whose icons we salute and on which we dry our tears and in which we wrap our naked bodies. There is nothing else. All is vanity but vanity and vanity of vanities. For you are not here to feel, Comrades. You are not here to touch the void or drink too deeply from what might be beyond the celluloid soporific ric-tic-tic-tic flickering mesmeric projectors you worship. No. There is nothing. Nothing behind the curtain. Defiance is death is fear is paralysis is poverty is unhappiness is sullied white gloves, Comrades. Sullied white gloves. We need not revert to puritanical names like Mammon, of course, for what did that fool know after all? Crazy, dirty, impoverished, desultory—slaughtered, after all. For God’s sake, is that really an example to follow? Come, now, Comrades, let us reason together. What is this? It is, simply put, a fee for what you cannot, must not live without. Incidentally, another one has gone missing this morning and so you, friend, you must take his shift as well as your own today. The congeries awaits you. Oh, the nobility and pride and satisfaction you must now feel! 25 Oct, 2007
Your skin: fiction—
Your words: fustian—
Your soul: insuperable—
You turn away with the ease of
Ice on hot macadam
And I wonder how you keep from feeling as desperate
As I do
I climbed my eleventh fourteener, and first Collegiate Peak, Mt. Yale, this past weekend with Jared who came for a visit over a long weekend.
