The Joint Trail & The Lawn (combined parts)

The Joint Trail

For all my romantics about the present moment, however, some sensibility remained.  I ended up waiting to see what the overhanging clouds did before I descended into a person-wide crack in the rock.  To pass the time, I scoped out a journaling spot on a large boulder from which I could see the far-off main realm of Canyonlands, the Joint Trail below, and the trail from which I’d came.  I journaled for anything from hours to minutes, ironically discussing how my own voice had come to startle me in my aloneness—when I picked up on the lilting voices of others on the wind.  As postulated by Thoreau, the human species (or at least keenness of hearing) indeed does thrive in nature, a conclusion I arrived at after the group emerged onto the slick rock almost ten minutes after I’d first heard them.  They did not see me.  I awkwardly watched, unsure of whether to make myself known before I startled them or to simply just take in the show.
More people began to pass through.  Most continued to lower themselves into the joint trail, while others wandered out to lookout points for photos, while others sat a stone’s throw below me eating trail mix and sandwiches.  Hardly any of them noticed me.  I was fascinated by how those people bumbled about, laughing, tripping, dropping things, all too wrapped up in themselves and each other to notice my watching eyes.  But why would they notice when they had companions to captivate their attention?  How different was my experience from their’s… And simply because I was alone.  They saw the same beauty, listened to the same gleeful birdcalls, had the same sore feet and smelled the same faint must of earth and juniper and yet weren’t half as attuned to the surrounding world as I.  They had no reason to be; they had another human to focus their senses on.  I had no such distraction.  
But it ran deeper than that. Behaviorally, in thought and action, I was different from my fellow humans around me because of my solidarity.  We tend to treat our environments as mirrors—the external affirming part of the two-fold self.  A fellow human can give clear-cut reflection—maybe manipulated slightly by the nature of the mirror’s wielder, but definitive nonetheless.  However, I only interacted with the impartial earth, which may interact with me in any myriad of ways that have absolute nothing to do with me.  Trying to get a sense of self from such interactions would be like trying to see one’s reflection in frothy, roaring white water.  I had nothing to define me—I was uncomfortably infinite.  They were something, I was anything.  And so we were different; yet again I felt more lonely in company than in psychical isolation.
The height of the afternoon came and passed, the weather dispersed (as did the multitude of two-legged creatures), and I tired of being trapped in my own head—so I decided to finally make my descent.  The rock corridor deepened gradually, hardly above my head at first.  The sand was still damp from the last storm, telltale ghosts of ripples and eddies still frozen in intricate swirls and dunes.  I wondered what it’d be like if a wall of water were to come crashing down now, how far I’d drift, if I’d meet my end crashing into a wall or a loose boulder.  By the looks of the floor, the water would’ve only been a few feet in height—more miserable than deathly to get caught in; one had to wonder about a fatal flood anyway though, for sake of increasing adrenaline if nothing else.  
Every now and then, the canyon would diverge into smaller slots to the left and right, wide enough to sneak through if you sidestepped and sucked in your belly.  I didn’t stick around long enough in any of those to see how far it’d be until I got stuck.  Every now and then, the floor would drop off sharply four or five feet, and I’d either have to scale down precarious boulders or a makeshift staircase (a six-inch wide log with small notches cut into it), putting more and more space between myself and any feasible quick escape.  Whether it was the universe or myself that had assigned this metaphor, I soon met a familiar anxiety over having no direction to move but forward.  
Eventually the trail bellied out along the lower layer of rock, widening to almost fifteen to twenty feet, betraying the work of the hundreds of thousands of floods that had eroded the walls.  It was almost cave-like, aside from the slim blue ribbon of sky running down the center of the roof. The trail hooked a right into a larger one of these caverns, leading into the spectacular oddity of the Cairn Temple.  Who dubbed it that, I haven’t a clue—but the title certainly was fitting.  Every level inch of surface area was adorned with miniature rock towers made from pebbles to melon-sized stones, ranging in height from three inches to three feet.  Even the smallest cuts in the sedentary wall of the carven shelved hoards of stacked rocks.  I simply stared for awhile, mystified and amused, before I eventually wove through in search of a spot to build my own. 
I built a relatively average cairn but still looked down at it with admiration for a bit before moving on.  I still had two hours before it was even worth considering dinner; I decided I’d continue following the trail to where it meets with the Elephant Hill’s four-wheel drive road.  I clambered down a rather steep rock staircase at the end of the Cairn Temple, emerging into the world of sunlight again.  I blinked and set off.  I stumbled across a family—a few sweat-drenched men looking absolutely miserable in Carhartt overalls, followed shortly by two sequin-clad little girls, and finally a few mothers in yoga pants meant for teenagers.  I’d definitely made it into the realm of motor vehicles.  My presence apparently garnered a break; they asked me how much farther, I informed them they were very close.  They grumbled about the fact it “was supposed to be right on the side of the road.”  I suggested that it was worth the hike.  I continued down toward the four-wheel drive road as they headed further into the backcountry, but I think either party vaguely wished to be retreating to the direction from whence they came. 
The whole confrontation left my slightly cultured-shocked, so I ended up ducking off-trail to avoid interacting with them on the way back.  I took my time along the joint trail as I passed through a second time, feeling a bit more at ease with the tight quarters.  When I arrived on the other side, Chesler Park was glazed in a golden late-afternoon light, frosting the waving grass tips of the range in white-gold.  
I climbed up to a lookout point and paused.  How odd it is that I’m here, I thought.  I am hours from civilization, even farther from anyone I know.  The nearest human, whoever they may be, is so removed from my realm of eyesight or earshot that they may as well not exist.  I see nothing before me in the distance but an otherworldly landscape of Needles bathed in yellow light and far-off russet canyon walls.  Somehow, for some unknown reason, I have been born in a certain place and have followed a certain life path to end up exactly in this place at this time.  What are the odds of that happening?  It seemed completely arbitrary. 
But it wasn’t.  As random as i may have felt, it had happened because I wanted it to.  I dreamt, doubted, proposed, researched, planned, fought, organized, bought, tested, packed, drove, trekked, navigated, cooked, cleaned, got scared, hoped, made choices, detested myself, appreciated myself, learned a few things, just to get where I am now.  I made this experience.  And I did it all on my own, without any influence, input, suggestion or guidance.  I had unwittingly proven to myself that I am far beyond capable of standing on my own.  I am, as the great preachers of solidarity would say, self-reliant.  And that was thrilling.

The Lawn

I came back to CP2 feeling better than I had in days—weeks—months.  The world around me had become impossibly more and more gorgeous as the afternoon drew on.  The brush was outlined in golden light from the lowering sun, from which tiny birds flitted on the wind and darting above the glowing bushes and grass, dancing to their own warbles.  Some part of my instinctual being took joy in the birds—their presence denoted good quality of life in the desert.  So long as they were around, things would be good.  (On another note, maybe that’s why we humans are so obsessed with flight—so that we too might up-and-leave, flap off, escape to better weather when things take a turn for the worst, like the birds).  
I tugged my sleeping pad from my tent and plopped it down at the mouth of the trail, where for the next few hours I looked over CP2’s front lawn—Chesler Park, the greater Canyonlands area, the mass of Utah’s high desert, the rest of the globe.  My journal sat in my lap, but I never never made a move to open it—some things were simply meant to be experienced. I knew I’d never be able to record the afternoon exactly as it was.  As much as I would’ve loved to draw, write, or take a picture of the spectacularity of the golden hours I lolled in, no documentation would ever recreate to full effect.  I admired the poetic justice to that.  To make another version would just devalue the quality of the original moment—an inflation of the experience’s awe.  Some things were meant to just be experienced.
Eventually my stomach won over my interest in the afternoon and I turned away from the gleaming Chesler Park to start working on dinner.  I threw together a wonderful dish for myself that was something between a pizza and a pita bread sandwich, loaded with easily a half inch layer of melted cheese.  I took my time constructing and deconstructing my kitchen, basking in the syrupy slowness of the evening.  
Once every miniature detail was taken care of—scrubbed, folded, collapsed, packed—I aimlessly climbed atop a tall boulder with a nearly perfect tabletop surface.  I had brought my journal with me, but felt no need to write anything down.  I opened it up anyway, debating that if I just started, maybe something would flow from my mind to the paper.  Yet I found that I didn’t really care if it did or did not, so I closed it again and laid back on the rock.  The sun had nearly set, and the sky was a few shades short of it’s usual striking azure—now more of a powdery, robin’s-egg hue. I took a deep breath, feeling my lungs swell into my belly, concentrating on the steady pump of oxygen in and out of my gut.  Experimenting with mismatched mediation techniques I’d collected over the years, I began tediously quieting my thoughts, even those of breathing—the ultimate goal being to think of absolutely nothing.
Only after the sky had turned to a light indigo did I rock up from my little reverie.  My consciousness roared back to life, rejuvenated in the feeling of reconnecting to the earth in a way that I hadn’t even realized was severed.  As I rose up, I caught the eye of a small desert hare sniffing about my camp—we held one another’s gaze for a good while until I made the mistake of readjusting.  He bolted off into the brush instantaneously.  I wished he wouldn’t go.  But I had moved, distracted myself, became detached from the world around me as I let my brain wander to other things, such as making myself comfier on the boulder.  
There is something to stillness, both of the mind and body, that alters how the world interacts with us.  The hare must’ve known I was there—he would’ve heard the beat of my heart or the rush of air through my nostrils, the smell of gasoline and civilized existence—yet he approached.  Of course, this easily could’ve done with my literal, physical lack of motion—but that alone couldn’t be the answer.  I considered the nature of stillness of mind, coming to the conclusion that the quieting of thoughts, intentions, and personal agenda was what had made me seem nonthreatening enough for a skittish hare to investigate.  
I got up from the boulder intending to get ready for bed, but couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than stare down the desert.  The remaining light from the recently set sun shone behind purple-grey clouds, casting the monumental taupe-and-rust spires of rock in a shade of permanent twilight.  The expanse of Canyonlands—the territory, not just the park—stretched off into the distance before me, from the striped sandstone needles to the deep, russet mesas, to the wide expanse of the Southwest desert.  By human definition—there was nothing.  Middle-of-nowhere.  No man’s land.  And all that existed was myself and this nothingness that went on and on forever.  Staring into the wilderness is synonymous to staring into the future, equally as unintelligible—I was terrified, excited, shockingly aware of being alive.
I wrote:
Before I say anything about anything else:
This is one of the most beautiful nights I’ve ever seen. 
and ended with:
I return to the same conclusion I did last time I was in Canyonlands, when I was eleven: 
Canyonlands is a sacred place.
Earth is a sacred place.
I sat for another moment longer, finally adding:

Thank you—to whatever force is responsible for this.