When you travel solo, you get to think a little. OK, you get to think A LOT. Ponder. Wonder. Ruminate on the state of the world. Speculate on the particular shape and substance of your navel. Sometimes you stray way off into the weeds. I did a lot of this.

I took a trip to Southern Utah over the last 2 weeks of April. The first week was mostly solo, and the second week was a backpack with the Desert Survivors, a desert hiking and conservation group.

Here’s an index for those who might want to just poke around.

- First Day: Birds in Nevada
- Second Day: North of the lake. Floodfunnel Canyon
- Day 3: Pilgramage to Lake Powell.
- Fourth Day: Kaiparowits Plateau
- Fifth Day: Slots
- Sixth Day: Return to the Escalante
- Seventh Day: Waterpocket Fold, Secret Garden and Arch
- Day 8: South Cainville Mesa.
- Other Days: Dirty Devil
- Day Hike: Zen and the Art of Canyon Exploring
- My Own Private Sipapu
- Last Day: Burr Point

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"Your black cards can bring you money
so you hide them when you're able,
In the land of milk and honey
you must put them on the table." -Steely Dan

- First Day: Birds in Nevada

There is no room in my heart for this landscape. My heart is still full of my homelife. Work, where the newest guy surfs for porn instead of doing his job, is still loud in my mind. Relationships, old and new, crowd about the edges. The radio is full of the war in the Balkans. The browns and dull yellows have their way, however, and slowly, slowly work through the noise like a long acquainted lover. The sky is low, chaotic. A dissipation of a winter’s moisture.

There’s an off-road race or races going on. I see dust plumes, rigs with logos, and RV’s at checkpoints. Tonopah is full of dusty ORV’s. 10 miles out of town an American flag lies crumpled in the roadside dirt, plainly obvious, plainly injured. A mere decoration lost to the highway. Just another T-shirt. The patriots, wrapped in 50 thousand dollars worth of air conditioned comfort, speed on by. Race on by.

I stop for the night a raven’s glide from Area 51, near Rachel, ground zero of conspiracy theorists and UFO nuts. Unfortunately, not too far away was a real ground zero 20-30 years ago. I camp dead downwind of it, in what was the most radioactive landscape in America outside the actual detonation grounds. This is lonely country. Here are pinion/juniper woodlands, Joshua trees, cholla, and yucca. A big gray coyote with a black tipped tail bounds from the roadside. No flowers yet, just cows. Like spirits, the unseen is more threatening than the seen. I look forward to a night under the sky. As I sit down to eat, the setting sun gets below the cloudbase and lights up my world. Incandescence! The scene changes from dull and gray to yellow---orange---violet! The clarity clears my heart. The Pahranagat hills light up. The west beyond the range glows softly, intensely. A flock of sweetly cawing birds gathers, forms a rough constellation, and performs a slow cackling flyby in celebration. I raise my whiskey in thanks. A sky like only Nevada can conjure. But fleeting, fleeting. As it all goes back to gray, I pose a question to myself: why do I persist in believing that all things are still possible?

Hours later coyotes call at the first sign that dawn is assured.

- Second Day: North of the lake. Floodfunnel Canyon.

I stop to pay homage at The Plug (Glen Canyon Dam). Thought about taking the tour in the bowels, but the canyons call. I want to feel that slickrock burn. Gas up and head out on the bench road north of the lake. A few jet skis circle Lone Rock in apparent recreation. The landscape here is a quick dissolving of soft chalk: yellow, gray, white. Coal seams add contrast and depth. Cows plod bleakly about for scattered grasses. Okeeffe would likely find inspiration here. With Okeeffe’s Grey Hill and Black Place in mind, I photograph some of the eroded forms, searching for mood and anthropomorphism.

I drive a ways and pick a long promising canyon. Floodfunnel, I call it. Both upper branches have springs and unpassable hanging waterfalls, but the western branch has an easy, but not obvious, shelf solution into the inner canyon. Once inside, there’s a small chute that most will want a rope to negotiate (I did). From there, it’s a gradual descent most of the way to the lake. I didn’t go all the way, but there didn’t look to be any obstacles. A very respectable canyon with close, high walls. The falls keep the cows out!

From my campspot I see the brown smog smear trailing east in the sky from the Navajo Generating Station. It’s a hazy and sulfurous connection to the sacred Navajo Mountain directly south. Burning coal, but not the layers I see in the hillsides. As dark falls, Page shines bright sodium-vapor orange. Tonight’s entertainment: the crescent moon occulting Aldebaran with Venus hanging brightly nearby. Clear skies, mild. Tonight’s question: if everything is possible, can we go back?

- Day 3: Pilgrimage to Lake Powell.

Dropped into Croton Canyon from a tributary. What started off nice turned into a wide cow pasture. It smelled of cowshit, and cow tracks chewed the streambed to a muddy pulp. Disappointment turned me around before getting to the lake. Drove around to Little Valley Canyon. The road to Grand Bench is blocked at a line camp just as it drops into Little Valley Canyon. The cowboys are using the road as a horse corral. I could have asked them to handle the horses as I drove through, but there’s a nasty patch on the road as it drops into the Canyon. I decide to be nice on my truck and hard on my feets. Besides, what do I want to do, drive or hike? I hike down Little Valley Canyon.

You know you’re getting close. The creek loses it’s bed. Gravel disappears into the slippery mud. All other vegetation ceases to grow save tamarisk. It thickens and spreads to the canyon walls on the widening plain of silt. The bathtub ring becomes apparent on the once-red stone. But where is the lake? There are no birds here, no mating frogs. Only tamarisk and silt. The trickling water dissolves into the sand. Not even the cows venture here. The playa widens further. A quarter mile more and even the tamarisk cannot grow. This is the death zone. A flat crusty sand plain from whitewashed wall to whitewashed wall. Still no lake. Burning to the eye and to the skin. Where is the jewel of the desert, as Floyd Dominy described it? A half mile more on the blistering flat it appears – green, brown, stagnant. Long-dead tamarisk branches from some drowned drought years fork from the muddy shallows. The assumption that water brings flourishing life does not apply here. What is above the water is drowned in sterile silt, what is below is starved of light and gasses. The slowly but constantly varying water level alternately bleaches and drowns. Approaching the still water seems foolhardy. The slippery mud would swallow you to your thrashing waist. I commit the only act that seems to fit such a scene. I piss and turn my back to it, hiking back to where life is possible.

Higher up, this canyon is an ecological disaster. Cows have chewed everything remotely edible down to nubs. Even the tamarisk looks abused. Their piss and shit and tracks mar the streambed. It smells like a barnyard. Any shade is an overturned mess of a stable floor. The only cottonwoods are old and broken. No young shoots of willow or cottonwood can get a foothold before being devoured. This is a slowly dying canyon, heavily weighted by an overburden of bovines. What little lives trickles and dies in the silty death zone below. The cows economically support what? 10 people? A dozen? Maybe provide a little cash flow to some far-removed corporation or association. This could be a nice little canyon, full of willow and cottonwood, wren and frog. Was. Could be again. Even without draining the lake below. Just take the cows out. Very simple. It doesn’t need an act of congress. There is no argument possible that the ecological loss is worth the economic gain.

- Fourth Day: Kaiparowits Plateau

Beat my poor truck to hell on the road up the Kaiparowits. One very nasty section of 4WD. More goddamn cows.

Found a side road to nowhere. Pinion, Juniper, this plateau, dry. Views to everywhere. 50 Mile Mountain a wave to the east. No mans anywhere. Parked truck, sleep. Come spend the night on the Kaiparowits with me. Packed water, bread, cookies, cheese. Down canyon, up canyon, side canyon lush. Low close walls. Hidden ruin. Stones and mortar. Broken pieces of an ancient life. Solitude. Ravens paired and sliding in the sky. Must I return? Can I return? Come spend the night on the Kaiparowits with me. Wind cold and strong from a distant place where storms form. Clouds caught on the stars and smeared, streaked. Moon dusty and weak. A soul stretched before the gods to see. Come spend the night on the Kaiparowits with me.

- Fifth Day: Slots

Caught Hole-in-the-rock road on the cow country above the Escalante. There was a freshly hit calf dying in the road, gasping tongue lolling in the dust, mother cow looking on in dim maternalism. I turned around to go tell the cowfolk back down the road, but they were already on the way. Back at the scene I stopped to ask if they thought it was a road-kill. They said yes. These guys were the real thing. Sun leathered faces, slow drawls, chaps, hard working eyes. The cowboy myth come alive. I feel like I am looking into my family farming past. Long past. I feel sorry that a calf is now dead by people like me, feel partly responsible. I have no objection to ranching in country like this. In moderation, out of the wet canyons. No chaining to improve forage. Local ownership and employment. But what a folly, as impossible as the cowboy myth. The world is changing fast, and nothing was ever done in moderation in the West, may never be. They thank me for my concern and my turning back to let them know about the calf. No blame in their eyes. Felt like an OK Calforn. Do they sleep at night unburdened by concerns about a changing world, or is it high in their mind like mine?

I think it was the speeding VW rabbit and Tacoma pickup with Utah plates that did it.

At the Spooky/Brimstone/Peek-a-boo trailhead there are 10 cars. Plates from Alberta, Montana, Arizona, Oregon, Florida, Utah. Is there a Sacred Calf killer among them? I have the slot canyons to myself. I don’t understand where everyone went, but I missed them all. I wanted to look into their meat eating, murdering eyes, but I didn’t have a chance. Instead I met two short young rattlers, one so tiny that it had only a noiseless black tip that flicked in an unpracticed way. Keeps ya on yer toes down in the confined spaces. The wind blew fiercely above and rained sand into the cold depths. I tried to grasp at the abstraction of the water-worn forms and burned a lot of film, trying to avoid reproducing the cliched "Antelope Canyon" shots. Gotta avoid those tripod holes. The slots are a difficult subject in B&W. Sand in my expensive gear. Lesson for the day: life is short, difficult, gritty. Full of snakes and speeding into an unknown and foreign future.

- Sixth Day: Return to the Escalante.

I got up before dawn to get ready for what would be a long day. Flip-flopping between a one night backpack down to the river and a very long day-hike, I decide on the dayhike. I’d rather go farther with a light pack that shorter with a heavy. Especially since there are multiple river crossings and a good bit of just walking down the middle of it in thigh deep water. Starting from Egypt I caught the river at Fence, went upriver to the glyphs in Choprock, and then down to Twentyfive Mile, up Twentyfive Mile and exited out on the low bench back up to Egypt. I arrived back just as there was no light left to see. What a joy to just GO for 11 hours straight. No encumbrances save the interweaving of weather and topography. Moving through the canyons, the chilled water, the willow thickets. There are 4 big glyph panels on this loop, all of them full of the familiar and the strange.

The Escalante is what really hooked me on the Canyon Country years ago, and not much has changed. This is my fourth loop to the river and back. There are many more people in the canyons, but I didn’t see a one on my long loop. Still more beaver sign than people sign. For now.

The glyphs on this loop are heavily vandalized. Some of it is just yahoos scraping wildly over the ancient figures, some of it is bullet holes in the heads of the ghosts and shamans, and some of it is determined and almost artistic. The latter consist of "cowboy" art. Outlines of cowboys reaching at the ancient bighorn glyphs, cowboys fist-fighting, horses with saddles…all of it very bright and recent. This was someone with a ladder and metal tools and some amount of talent. As I consider this, a pair of B-1 bombers roar and weave through the clouds overhead. I think of what is happening in the Balkans: ethnic cleansing. The "cowboy art" is right on top of the old glyphs even though there is plenty of blank wall all around. This was the work of someone determined to overlay the new on the old. Their actions suggest a desire to at least outshine the ancient, if not obliterate it with the strength of the modern. The cowboy outlines are life sized, aggressive. Here I gain comfort that just as the ancient art is violated, so will the ways of the cowboy very soon be overlain with something even more modern. Unfortunately, the things that will pave their way of life over will be strip malls and boxy housing developments. Time rolls on, and perspectives are always changing. The river flows and canyons are cut. From this level of sediment, I am disgusted and distracted by the boring and new scratched into the magic and the ancient.

- Seventh Day: Waterpocket Fold, Secret Garden and Arch.

Supposed to be rest day after the 15+ miles yesterday. Rain on Egypt bench. The truck has a flat tire from a slow leak which started on the Kaiparowits. I find myself in the town of Escalante in need of automotive help. A Calforn in a town of Calforn haters. Had the tire fixed while I listened to the other mechanic talk to someone about how "the outsiders" want to lock up the land and shut down the roads. Said that pretty soon everyone will have to walk all the way from the Hole-in-the-Rock road to get into the canyons. Pure silliness. I stay out of it. The strip malls are coming soon. I’d be scared of losing a somewhat dignified job for a restocking job at WalMart too, if I were him. Let him enjoy his Xenophobia, it’s probably half justified.

Snow on the Burr Trail, deepening. I find an unpromising little gulch into the high ridges of Waterpocket Fold, searching for form and texture. I poke around in the potholes and fissures. Back around a small butte, hidden behind a juniper tree is a narrow passage. It widens, narrows, and then opens into a secret garden. It is lush with vines and guarded by a tall ponderosa. Walls on all sides, no footprints. Tapestries on the sheer and rounded sandstone. At the upper end I look up at the gray and threatening sky. A perfect little arch clings to the edge of the highest wall, observable only from the far end of the garden. I feel blessed by the canyon gods today.

I exit the garden and notice another passageway just to the right. It narrows and narrows further. I leave my pack and shimmy. I must inhale to gain passage. Climb, scramble. There are no black boot marks here as there were in the slots in the Escalante. Most Americans could not even fit this far. Then the upward passageway opens into yet another garden. This one just a grassy crevice 20 feet wide and 200 long. The walls are 300 feet high on all sides and must block most of the light that might enter here. There are no footprints here either. I look around in awe, like a 5 year old in a cathedral. Heck, this IS a cathedral. I step as to leave as little trace as possible, so that it might be just as special for the next explorer. If I had to go home tomorrow, indeed, if I die tomorrow, I would leave full of wonder and pleasure, satisfied. But then why leave? If I had to die, why _not_ right here? Sheltered, hidden, in the middle of majesty and color and grace. Who could ask for a better place to be washed and bleached? Reconciled and reabsorbed. I promise myself to come back someday by myself or with someone special to do a little more contemplatin’ and jaw gapin’. Sometime when the rain and snow doesn’t threaten to strand me on the greasy clay back road where I parked the truck.

Snow on Boulder Mountain. I drive to the San Rafael Swell to meet Mike and Amy and Brian. I wonder if the rain and snow will mean that they cancel, but I find Mike and his rented Las Vegas rental hanging out at the entrance to the Swell, right where he said he would be. I had never met Mike before. I only knew him a little from the Abbeyweb discussion group. We had a great talk about Michigan and land issues and relationships as we waited for Amy and Brian, who showed up somewhere around 10 after a very wet and slippery drive from SLC. After a week of seeing 10 times as many cows as people, I was grateful for the company. Amy immediately produced a bottle of Glen Livet and proceeded to pass it around. Damn, I need to come hang out with Utah folks more often! In California, we’d have to start with the cheese and beer, working our way up through the wine, and then finally get to the whiskey part of the discussion just as everyone was about to go to bed. Here in the driest state in the Union, I guess you just cut to the chase. We eventually made it to bed, optimistically hoping that the break in the storm would continue through the night. Wrong! About 45 minutes later we were piling into Mike’s tent. Thanks Mike! It rained hard most of the night, and we awoke to puddles and drips inside the tent.

The next morning, after an "early start", we left Mike’s rental and drove into the swell. Snow! Four inches and deepening! This is like driving over mountain passes. What the heck are we doing here? We get to the final turn-off to Hidden Splendor and flip a coin for a decision as to whether to retreat or proceed. Ignoring the decision we drive on down the Hidden Splendor in clearing skies, as if fate needed to be tested in order for us to proceed. We poke around the Uranium mines, sniffing for Radon and RS2477 violations. I try to pack about 3 days worth of discussions about public land and environmental issues into the space of a few hours. Brain and Amy are patient guides, and passionate about these issues, but I’m not sure they really wanted the onslaught of deep and difficult questions. They even tolerate a whale discussion! They decide to do a backpack over to a side canyon off Muddy Creek, and I join them for a few hours. I wish I could continue for the rest of the weekend with them, but I’m signed up to meet with the Desert Survivors tonight so I wish them a good trip and turn around.

A half mile from Hidden Splendor on the road back, my exhaust pipe separated from the manifold. BLAAAAT! BLAAAAAAAAAT! Only four cylinders, but the noise is deafening. I goose it extra loud as I pass the massed and soggy ORV crowds back near the entrance to the Swell. WAAAAAAHHHHH! ROAAAAAAAR! Take that! They all turn their heads. What’s that? I laugh. But then of course I find myself in Hanksville with a virtually undrivable car. After checking at a few places, fortunately, there is a mechanic in town who can help me. Hanksville is much friendlier than Escalante. Go there. Spend money.

- Day 8: South Cainville Mesa.

I meet up with the group and spend the night at a campground in Hanksville. This is a tiny town, but still full of lights and sounds that I’m not used to after a week sleeping far out. We do a warm-up hike up South Cainville Mesa so that the leader can see if everyone is able to do the 5 night backpack. We are all very strong hikers, probably the most consistently strong group I’ve ever hiked with on a Survivor trip. The Mesa is high and wild and a wonderful climb. Once on top the views of the Henries and the Blue hills are incredible. There’s a very well built shepherd’s cabin out in the middle of it. This is the most underrated and unknown hike in all of Southern Utah. Cut your Escalante trip a day short and climb the Mesa. Bring B&W film for the surreal and mystical Blue Hills. They don’t look like much from ground level, but they become abstract and mind-boggling from your view up in the clouds. Go out to the edge and pretend you’re a raven. Breathtaking. Yeah, I know, I’m giving away secrets here, but I gotta compensate for the other vagueness.

- Other Days: Dirty Devil

We ended up spending only 4 nights out in the Dirty Devil. I had never been into these canyons before this trip, but always wanted to go. After dropping down to Angel Cove, we dove into the Robby Rooster canyon complex and explored most of the branches and side canyons. The Dirty Devil drainage is Escalante-like, but more open, with longer vistas. The river itself is browner and wider than the Escalante, carrying more water, but not any deeper. It’s floatable, but probably only in the spring. The Robby Rooster canyons have wide sandy floors which narrow farther up as the canyons cut through the Wingate and Navajo layers. Most of the canyons we explored had waterfalls in the Kayenta layer, some passable and some impossibly tall and overhung. The sandy floors, which were firm with all of the rain, would be mushy and very difficult hiking in drier conditions. There are few glyphs and no ruins that I could find. Also with the rain, the flowers were ready to explode. The orange globe-mallows and scarlet prickly pears were just opening. The willows were blooming. In the warm exposures were a few rough daisies, paintbrush and even a balsamroot. In a week or two these canyons will be carpeted with color (mid-May). There were plants with buds everywhere, waiting for a warm day or two.

Where is the drought that I have heard about all spring? Each day threatens rain. Some days it delivers. The squalls are preceded by darkening skies and spiraling winds. The rain never lasts long, but could come at any time. One day, while we were out on a dayhike, a storm blew through our camp. Two tents ended up in the creek, and a third, having been emptied of its contents, landed about 100 meters up a side canyon. Probably lucky it didn’t go further. Didn’t find any ruby slippers thereabouts.

My tripmates all bring tents, but I decide, in defiant optimism, to bring a bivy sack instead. Fortunately, there are alcoves near both of our camps, and I get the best of both worlds: wide open skies and a dry place to sleep. No pattering of rain and rustling of nylon, but the curious pack rats deposit little hanta turds on every bit of scattered gear. Poison ivy to watch out for too.

- Day Hike: Zen and the Art of Canyon Exploring

Our first day hike is up the South Fork. This canyon has seen some violence. Bad vibes for me. The cottonwoods all look like they were snapped at mid-trunk in a long-ago flash flood. There is regrowth from most, but death in some. Something is not in harmony hereabouts. Steve had loud frightening dreams about his mother in the night, waking others. The tapestries loom and the creek seems to falter and have a difficult time in its course. We pass a creek pool and promise to have a dip when we pass back this way. Ger is just diving into Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Ron is reading a book on the four great truths of Zen, but has only read about two: Enlightenment and Acceptance. We talk about these as we hike upcanyon, about how to apply these concepts to life, about living for the day.

Far up one of the branches, just short of a Kayenta falls, we stop for lunch. Steve and I continue to the falls while the others eat lunch first. The canyon closes in and deepens, the vegetation thickens. The falls are not large or high, but have carved a nice cirque in the lower layers of Wingate. Water trickles and splashes in the pool. Then we see the damage. Very recently, maybe yesterday, a group has carved 18 sets of initials all about the chamber. The dust from the pecking and scratching is fresh. To drive home their point, the vandals shat on the sand just under the graffiti. Toilet paper and flies swirl in the breeze. What? I am taken aback, flabbergasted. We saw a party about that large going up the Angel trail as we hiked in. These were backpackers! Kin! Brethren! Who would sweat and strain to travel to this remote alcove only to deface it? Here there are no glyphs to deface, just one of the nicest little spots in the canyons. I shake my head in misunderstanding. I suggest to Steve that we obliterate the initials, but he wants the rest of the group to be disgusted as well. As I return to the group, I think about the Zen principles. Acceptance. Some people are unreasonable, and the world is ugly sometimes. To fight these facts is an exercise in futility. The rest of the group wanders upcanyon to see the damage. Soon the sound of knock-knocking and rasping are heard echoing down. They are cleansing the stone. Making coherent marks into chaotic scars, like the removal of a tattoo. Negating the message the vandals wanted to send. Is this part of acceptance or is it still resisting? When does resistance mean that acceptance is being denied?

We skinny dip in the pool on the hike back, but the sun is clouded and the wind blows cold. More of a bath than a fun splash for everyone. Another lesson: we should have just jumped in on the hike up. Live for the moment, otherwise the moment is past.

- My Own Private Sipapu

A day or two later I do a short solo afternoon hike ahead of a larger group who will follow me up another side canyon. I like to carry things in my hands when I hike: Pieces of grass to peel, juniper twigs, laural leaves to crush and sniff. Helps me think and focus. This hike I pick and carry interesting stones from the creekbed. I continue to think about two of the four Zen truths: Enlightenment and Acceptance. I always thought that only enlightenment was necessary. With enough knowledge and understanding, anything is possible, and all is revealed. I never thought too much about what to do after gaining knowledge and understanding; it always seemed that the path would be obvious given sufficient enlightenment. I think the path in my thinking always involved a positive or negative action of some kind. Acceptance is not an action, but a more passive state of mind (glasshoppa…). Some things cannot be changed, cannot be fought, cannot be inspired. They must be taken just as they are. I carry a stone in either hand. I look at them in surprise. In the left hand is a small white stone with hard corners, monocrystalline. Enlightenment. Pure. Ideal. In the right hand is a larger, globular stone. It is splotched with orange, red, white, and brown. It has a mud-like coating on some parts that will not wash off. Acceptance. Ugly. Realistic. Whoa…which came first, the stones or the thoughts?

I look up to find myself at the juncture of the main canyon and a side canyon on the right. Not much time before I have to return. I look at the canyons…I look at the stones. I choose the side canyon on the right. The walls close in, as they do in all of these side canyons. I pick up two other rocks that catch my eye as I alternately gawk at the high walls and study the streambed. One is a flat, rectangular, credit-card sized slice of sandstone. It has lichen etchings on one side. A lithic language that I cannot translate, like runes. The other is a teardrop piece of jasper, flesh colored (Abbey’s secret burning heart of the canyons, now broken?) The walls are sinuous, sensuous. There is always femininity in the shape and flow of the canyons, but here it intensifies and darkens. I am drawn farther. I turn what becomes a final bend and, across a wide courtyard, have revealed to me the vulva of the earth. The skin of the walls converges into a thin fissure, as tall as the sky, rhythmic in its form, symmetric and inviting. I startle myself as if to wake from a dream. I’ve never seen such a sight in all of my exploration of these gulches and streams. I take a step backward, unsure of reality for a moment. The creek is born from the rock. It gathers and winds toward me. Low bushy trees grow near the meeting of canyon and cleft. I approach in wonder and delight. This is not a dream.

I drop pack and shoes and clothes on sand and stand before the opening bare and reverent. I feel compelled to see what lies within, how far the fissure will allow visitation. With four stones in hand I enter the frigid waters at the mouth. They deepen and chill further. I submerge. My scrotum shrinks and recoils. The water becomes chest deep and I gasp as my toes flex and cling to the slippery mire. The wind far inside moans and pulses. All is cold and dark. I arise at the far end of the pool into a narrow cavern of washed serpentine folds. I smooth my palms on the stone, searching for warmth in the gloom. No sun this deep, and dangerous with the threatening storms. The forms gather and dance in the gloom. I reach and turn, wondering at the meeting of rock and weather and earth and time that could create a passage thus. No fear, but no peace either. If there is a hint of the otherworld anywhere, it floats in this place. The chasms and vaults continue high and profound, echoing the storms that have passed and thirsty for those to come. The depths are unreachable, unknowable. At the foot of a final polished waterfall I leave two of the stones, then turn.

I emerge from the cleft shivering and squinting at the bright sky. Immediately at my feet, caught in an umbilicus of roots washed and torn, are three half buried feathers. I pull and pluck them from the chaos. They are large and black, stiff and caked. This is the canyon where Raven was born.

A few answers and many questions. These are the canyons for me. I must someday learn the other two great truths of Zen.

I meet the others back in the main canyon, and they ask what I have seen. I blush and smile and say "…some really cool things…" They think I am being coy. They think I am saying "nanny, nanny, I saw something you didn’t." But I am thinking, I have just seen the vulva of the earth, was just reborn from the stone, what can I say? I’ve had this over-deep experience, amplified by my own interpretations. How can I share this? "Stop playing games, Chris!" the leader says. Now I’ve insulted my tripmates. They think I am hiding something. I am I suppose, but only because...I cannot… They are angry, impatient. No! You don’t understand! I say to myself. I try to say that it’s really great and you have to go discover it yourself, it’s the only way to know. But there is no time, we must return. There is now a rift between me and them, unspoken. I think of the right-hand-stone. Acceptance. I cannot share the experience at that time, and there are things that cannot be understood, even if I try. Things maybe I cannot understand, even though I have just experienced them. Things maybe you the reader cannot understand without being there yourself.

It rained that night and my head was filled with wild erotic dreams.

- Last Day: Burr Point.

We leave the canyons early because a NOLS group has occupied Angel Cove, our destination for the last night, and the drop into Box Beaver Canyon is a little more than some of the less experienced members of the group can handle. We decide to leave the canyon and hop over to Burr Point. Here’s the long and the short of it: Think of Burr Point as the South Rim without the McDonalds. If you drop into the void, bring a rope to lower your packs through one section, or to help the less experienced. The Henries tower and the canyon, as always, beckons.