After spending a week with Ann-Weiler Walka near Bluff honing out observational and written skills, we produced several short works and one longer essay. I found this experience incredibly rewarding for my own mental health, a break from the crazy schedule we've been living, but also frustrating. A Northern Rockies girl at heart, I had a difficult time relating to the harsh exposure of the desert. As a result, here is the piece I wrote:
I splash cool water over my face, a soothing change from the baking sun and abrading wind. Lying face down on the contoured sandstone, I stare at my reflection in this pothole, surprised at how little has changed. Days in the desert, this land of rolling rocks and shifting sand, has left me raw - burned from the sun, cracked and scratched from the land, and exposed – as though my secrets are uncovered for all to see. I am surprised that this desert capsule has not swallowed me up with its vast canyons and raging winds. No, this desert leaves me solitary, alone in my unease. And so I search for a place here that I can call my own, a home where questions have answers and I am sheltered from the elemental force of this land.
Terry Tempest Williams tells us, “If a desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide, and so we are found,” and, on occasion, I agree with her. Standing on top of Comb Ridge for the first time, we watched a storm descend on us from farther North. A curtain of water engulfed us, washed us clean of our preconceptions and inhibitions about this place and left us bare, exposed to one another, to the landscape and to ourselves. I watched rivulets of water stream between my toes and felt a strange communion with this desert, a communion that quickly dried the following morning with the last sodden remnants of the storm. But those moments have come only occasionally for me and this exposure I feel brings with it a discomfort that characterizes a foreign place.
For days here I struggled to find meaning, to create a deep map that portrayed my own feelings and understandings of a place that isn’t mine. I find myself falling too easily into cliché and don’t know how to add meaning, add newness and shine to a landscape I do not know. Rather, I begin to depend on the words of others to conceptualize the desert. I can feel the sandstone beneath my feet, but don’t have the words to describe the way it confounds my toes into thinking I walk on crushed velvet, not rock. I admire the vistas, but see these mesas and canyons as static landmarks to help me get my bearings rather than stops along the crawling geologic process of time. I need the words of others because I do not possess the words to write the desert, to unearth, within myself, a sense of place here.
This time in the desert has left my feeling lost. My compass still points North, but learning the landscape so I can get my bearings is a slower process among landforms that look to me like one continuation of the same grand idea and leave me turning circles. I stand alone here, between sand and sky, and think about home. Home is a place I haven’t been for awhile, but the more I move the easier it is to find. And so I take this idea of home and translate it here onto the desert.
After days of wandering on this slickrock slope, I came to a place yesterday I can point to and say, “This place, this place I understand.” Ancient grey-green juniper trees and overgrown, snarled shrubs shade two pools – one large and one small – that probably see no more than three hours of sunlight each day. Two stones configure into stairs, complete with juniper handholds, and lead down to the larger pool. On one side, a private changing room for the shy guest, on the other a perfect shelf on which to re-warm stiff muscles after an icy dip. In a desert, famous for its absence of hiding places, this spot is sheltered, overhung and obscured from the passerby. And so, I’ve found my home here in a little alcove completely uncharacteristic of this land. The water is chilly, and moss stays green for days after rain in the shade of a thick slab of sandstone. Rather than exposure, I feel a deep sense of secrecy, of comfort, of conspiracy as though this place and I plot our clandestine enjoyment hidden from the rest of the land. It’s not rawness, but refreshment that brings a tingle to my skin as I slide my naked body into the frigid water of this desert pot-hole. Refreshment and relaxation, relief to have finally found a retreat for myself. Though this haven is not the quintessential desert written about by Mary Austin, Ellen Meloy or Terry Tempest Williams, this is the desert for which my words convene. We are told that deserts are a sacred journey to the self found only because there are no places to hide. But for me, I’ve found my hiding place here, my blue amidst a sea of red, and so I am home.
After taking off the river, we headed South for several days on the Navajo reservation. We met with several different organizations including two fighting the incoming coal fired power plant and a few lawyers working on various environmental issues. We also got the opportunity to stay just outside of Canyon de Chelly and take a moonlit tour with a national park service employee. Once again, we are reminded of our relatively recent hold on this land the immense amount of tradition that came before us.
After Navajoland, we returned to the Bluff area of Utah for a four day writing workshop with area writer Craig Childs. The first few days were spent romping up, down and around Mule Canyon, exploring cliff dwellings, frigid pools and learning to move like lizards on the sticky sandstone. Our time with Craig was highlighted by storytelling, of his adventures in the area and the outside world, the history of the people who inhabited the four corners, and his many harrowing tales of living outside for a majority of his life. From Craig we learned that everything is a story, that everything can be somehow tied to everything else, and that an unimproved road is the one most likely to lead somewhere exciting.
We've now moved South to New Mexico once again for a brief stay with William DeBuys on the property he writes about in The Walk. This morning we took the walk with him, and listened to his stories of the 35 years he's spent on this land. Again, we count our lucky stars to be here with this group, traveling through a landscape both coveted for its; beauty, but also controversial for its' resource use and extraction.
