2005-04-24
1000 miles, then I find I've climbed to the pinnacle of a 100-ft rock tower. With weeks of pre-work, delegation, and a voluminous contingency email to my coworkers, I snuck away from the Bus Project for nine days. From working my butt off in Oregon politics to working my butt off in the Southeastern Utah desert. I need a vacation.
Moab. It's like living in a roadrunner cartoon. I said that even before I saw the roadrunner. The Utah setting explains the Polygamy Porter, but why waste words on state-limited 6.4 proof beer when I could wax poetic about the scenery.
Actually, no need. I adopted Mark's D70 for much of the week, meaning I have a picture or two hundred.
I pride myself on being a safe person - one who has an almost actuarial sense of risk. There are those who might doubt this, given my tendency to scuba dive, rock climb, cliff jump, hitchhike, hop aboard moving boxcars, motorcycle, wakeboard, travel to Cambodia, ski, and canvass for progressive candidates in the militantly mindless suburban hell of Gresham. Fact is that these are each safe, given care and a touch of finesse.
My risk radar works, as evidenced by the eviscerating fear I experienced when mountain biking this morning. In rock climbing, for instance, if you experience speed for more than a protected 15-foot tumble, you've already done something pretty terribly wrong. Biking, as I remembered when careening down 40-degree geological strata on the practice loop at Slickrock, is intended to have some velocity. Namely, a lot.
I let Mark and Paul pull ahead, despite protestations. I paraphrase:
Paul: C'mon, you goofy American, we're in the same boat.
Garrett: Paul, do you have health insurance?
Mark: Well, do you think I have any?
Garrett: Mark, have you biked off-road since the Santa Claus trails?
The Santa Claus trails have had a subdevelopment on top of them for eight years now. They headed off together. I waited ten minutes, then headed the same way.
It wasn't that I didn't want to hit the world's most famous bike trail - just that I might want to walk much of it. All sixteen gorgeous (emphasis on the "gorge") miles went down in the next four hours. I conveniently didn't find the loopbacks.
An extra three liters of water and it would've been the perfect ride. Though the dehydration-induced hallucinations were kinda fun. The terrain's as beautiful as one can imagine, and I've a healthy imagination. Like the time I imagined what would've (literally) gone through my head had I been bouncing on my front tire a lil' longer, or with the rear wheel past vertical. Endos = bad.
That culminating Snickers Hazelnut was the finest I'd ever et. Once more, hats off to Sasha.
Milford Sound and the Olympics have a competitor. Devil's Garden, aside from its famous arches, is comprised of distinct monolithic wind-and-rain-swept red ridges. Most of these ribs tally hundreds of meters long. From a vista you see a haphazardly ordered texture, but viewed up close and isometrically, each ridge appears an oil-tanker-sized locomotive hauling its seamless ruddy cargo to points far south.
The Primitive Trail avoids any company. Ancient thorny juniper surround - like the rock, molded by a wind patient beyond any Mr. Miyagi.
I'm a slower hiker than I used to be. Not less capable - I'm more fit than ever - but slower. This four hour trail will take me all day, and not just because I get away from the known. I get away from others when I can, but mainly I get away to myself.
And I packed six liters of water today.
I'm using a Louis L'Amour truism in a Louis L'Amour setting: the desert's alive. Between the cactus, hares, craws, scrub, prairie dogs, and red plants that look tasty but I'm quite sure aren't, it feels like a friendly, arid family. Makes me want to curl up under a shady snag for a couple-hour nap. 'Cept I'd decimate decades of cryptobiotic crust when I lie down, and'd have to brush rattlers off my chest and scorpions out of my boots when I wake up.
Years after shutting down Mediamoth Video Team, I now make my debut as an impromptu wedding videographer / photographer. Ran into some acquaintances from the rock gym in Portland. One'd gotten her minister's license, and two of the others'd gotten sick of planning for their September wedding. So they'd trucked out to Arches National Park, to get married in a setting more stunning than any church except for that wooden one downtown. With the curves.
Happy marriage, Gorman and Carrie. You chose a good spot. Hope a few of those shots turned out.
You rarely feel more like a cowboy than when smack dap in the middle of a 25-mile hike through Canyonlands. Especially if that middle coincides with lunch on the top of a boulder square in the middle of Chesler Park. Untold miles of confusing, dry desert canyons lead - if you follow the cairns - to this one-mile diameter oasis. The real cowboys used to graze their stock here. I just cock my hat back in deference.
There is nothing more attractive than this scenery. Except for a solitary young woman trekking through this scenery, SLR around her neck. Climbing gear is a plus, but the camera is key.
Paul, Mark and I've impressed folks all week with our feat of cramming three six-foot-plus guys, their mountain biking, climbing, hiking, and camping gear inside a modestly sized SUV. Turns out that, in a freak side effect of leaning on the bike forks next to you in the back seat, it's the perfect nap-nook. Maybe it's the front suspensions being all gentle-like.
This trek's given me the opportunity to bust out some of my old vagabonding gear. I'd forgotten just how amazing a shirt Ex Officio slaps together. The latest synthetic textile tech and ventilation systems make for the coolest uppergarment ever.
Except that's a lie. On the toastiest of days, I break out the farmer's shirt I picked up for 100 baht ($2.50) from a back-alley merchant in Indochina. In the sun, it's like wearing negative shirt. They've been doing it right over there for hunnerds of years.
And I get the pleasure of folks asking me where the Renaissance Faire is to be found.
My mind's been off politics enough this week that it was Mark who noticed that mountain biking and hiking trails are shown in blue on maps, whereas 4x4 / dirt bike paths are red. In case you're not sure which one's yours, just check your party registration.
Meals snagged when stopping through tourist towns are about 40% too expensive. That said, an impressive amount of milage can be culled from a $10.99 pizza/salad/soup buffet. Turns out that a beer-cheese soup at night makes for power-packed 5.10b pitches the next morn.
Turns out I was in the backcountry, craving eggs benedict, at about the same time the new pope was choosing his name. And it's been said I don't got religion. Harumph.
Another coincidence - we hiked 15 miles through technical desert canyon country just before hopping in the car, stealing some showers, and setting off for the 15-hour drive home. We're in the Gorge now, two hours outside Stumptown... at a rate to get us the 1000 miles in a speedy 14 hours. This makes the 15 mile/15 hour coincidence more tenuous, but I'm still taking the chance to brag about our pace.
And we didn't even get any tickets on the way back. Thank you, Idaho State Troopers.
2 Comments:
Gorgeous. Utah's a state that Amanda and I were very implressed with on our trip. Nice to see it again.
There's a certain indescribable joy to revisiting your old posts, especially when I can link the major events/moods in your life to mine of the same time period. Without the luxury of this journal of yours -- far more comprehensive than mine could ever be -- I'd be lost in an entwined but anachronistic puddle of my self-heavy vignettes. But this methodical archive binds me to you a second time, as when we silently endeavored through those far-off lands that changed us forever, as individuals and friends. We sometimes shared directly -- but as often treasured the humanity of simply perceiving the other, without expectation of reciprocation. So I thought I'd give myself a bit of permanent form -- for you. Not as much as you've given, but a valuable thought about what we've shared that will at some future point become a shared moment in itself. Best yet, this skill of ours, this skill absolutely unique to our relationship, can never diminish.
By , at 2:20 AM
