The jagged rock formations of Zabriskie Point in Death Valley.
Country road, take me home…
John Denver shuffled to the top of the playlist before we’d even left the national park. Ashley and I laughed at the happy coincidence: we were indeed on the road home, though it would take us several days and three states to reach it.
On the day Ashley and I turned thirty and our youth died forever, we broke camp in darkness and drove out into the desert. For all that the Navajo National Monument feels remote, it’s actually quite close to civilization: we passed a school bus on our way west. A little outside the town of Page, we pulled into a nearly-empty parking lot and settled in for a long wait. We were here to see the famous Antelope Canyon.
The rising sun casts cool shadows over the Colorado River.
We woke on the banks of the Colorado River. This far north, the river was a tiny thing. The canyon it had carved through the red Moab rock was equally small, the walls barely high enough to delay the sunrise. In a few days we would see the Colorado again, but by then it would be a powerful river sunk deep within one of the largest canyons on the planet. The thought was almost too much to wrap my head around.
Red rocks and blue skies near the entrance to Arches National Park.
I won’t say the showers were worth the expense and disappointment of staying in a KOA, but they were nice. We started the day (Day Three) clean and well-rested and refreshed, and then it was a short drive from Green River to the first of our major destinations: Arches National Park.
Ever since I read Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, Arches has seemed like a pilgrimage site to me. I was excited by the prospect of finally seeing it for myself—and of spending most of a day outside of a car.
Sometimes—okay, let’s be honest, usually—when I try to plan something, I get stuck. It’s because I’m terrible at planning things. When there are more than three things to juggle in my head I start dropping them, and adding time just makes everything worse. Getting the ideas out of my head and onto paper helps—sometimes. But sometimes I just stop planning and start doing, with the (naive, optimistic) assumption that I’ll figure things out as I go along. Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
Bird, Wandering 