Walking the land is a form of poetry. My preference is off-trail walking, especially in the high deserts of the west. Every curve and slope, drainage and rock outcropping, becomes an experience. There is no better way to observe animals, plants, rocks and soil, the weather, and your own heart rate, and new thoughts and deep old memories. It can be done singly or with a friend. This is the original activity and pace and rhythm of human observation, learning, and thinking.
Ken Wright and I exited Dark Canyon by way of the tributary Lean-to Canyon. It was during the early 90s, and it was in the month of May, so there was still a little water to be found. There wasn’t a trail, and we didn’t know if we could scramble our way up the layered cliffs. Just before the final broken wall, we came to a little spring. We filled our bottles. Topping out of the canyon we were on the Dark Canyon Plateau.
From the confinement of the canyon, we were now atop a landscape of wide and unobstructed views. We could see from the Henry Mountains to the Abajos. Layers of rock, out towards Cataract Canyon, were dozens of miles long. It was what might be called “charismatic mega scenery”. Still, by sunset, we were exhausted, totally spent, and hungry. Ken just wanted to unroll his sleeping bag and fall asleep, but I knew this would leave us really weakened by morning, so I insisted that we reconstitute our last bag of noodles in boiling water. We fueled our fire with cow pies. I have rarely done this, but I can attest that it’s effective. It even smells nice. Really!
In the morning, we had fifteen miles to walk, to Ken’s jeep, parked up at the Sweet Alice Hills. We had come this way because, looking at our topographic map while still thousands of feet below, we could see that there was a road on the plateau, and we had the notion that we could just hitch a ride. We found the barely perceptible “road”, but you might say that the traffic was light. In fact, there weren’t any cars at all.
People who are familiar with these place names will know that we were in what is, at least for now, the Bears Ears National Monument, in southeastern Utah. Naturally, I favor strong protection for the area, and feel that it’s appropriate that Native Americans take a good deal of control of the land, instead of Utah’s extraction-corrupted politicians. With gas and oil wells, and roads and coal mines, they would scarify and pollute the land forever, and this only for short-term gains from resources that are being phased out, because there are now cheaper and cleaner ways to produce energy. Plus, I’d like to continue experiencing that country, and I don’t want to see it trashed. People for at least seven generations should have the same opportunities as me.
On a springtime afternoon, south of Farson, Wyoming, I parked along the highway and walked way out into the grass and sagebrush. Along a subtle sedimentary ridge, I found some delicate fossils. I marveled at them and left them. Every hundred yards or so, however, there were fresh and fat tire tracks from four-wheelers. I believe that they had been searching for antlers. Then, suddenly, chaotic noise exploded.
This was from birds called longspurs. The sounds were not singing; they were of sheer terror, screaming injustice, and panic. Suddenly I was in a veritable war zone. I looked to the ground, and there was a tire track and a crushed nest. I lowered myself to within inches of the miniature scene of disaster. There were the fragments of about three little eggs.
Longspurs are ground nesters. They live in colonies, so there were others around, too. To them I must have seemed to be another unfeeling disaster, only slightly less terrifying than the four wheelers. I said a little prayer, and wiped a tear. I gingerly proceeded deeper into the landscape, and into my thoughts. People on motorized recreation vehicles are not too impressive to me.
This, even though I wouldn’t have minded hitching a ride with one, many years earlier, on the Dark Canyon Plateau.
I saw two more nests, and these had not been run over, but the parents were understandably protesting my presence. I wondered if the four-wheeling people had shed a tear, or even knew the destruction they had wrought.
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