We left in the predawn but later than I wanted to, not that it wasn’t early, or I had a goal that would require us to depart at such ridiculous hours. It was more that if I didn’t leave several hours before the sun was even attempting to rise, I was a failure. I lacked the discipline and resolve to wake at the hour needed and that fact cast our trip into a shade of failure already. This was nonsense perpetuated by my brain that was already needily consuming the caffeine that I had begrudgingly provided.
       This aside, the sunrise found us just across the Utah border in slightly better spirits. We hurtled down the interstate at speeds that seemed like they should be illegal, especially in the vehicle that I drove. Sliding past green river the wave that seemed ready to crash as it rose out of the Utah skyline that was the San Rafael Swell arrived before us in its cold beauty.
       We probably should have stayed here, to be honest. Toughed out the cold and found some nook in the sandstone wave to explore, but the cold was ever present and the temptress that was warmer weather further south was just as so. A quick jaunt up a canyon that some people had probably spent their entire lives in a few hundred years ago, only to leave some faint etchings as marks that they even set foot here. I traveled far more lightly upon the landscape than they did, in some manners, only taking photographs and leaving but a few footsteps across the few miles we plodded through before departing. This being said, the traces of people like me are not as faint, for Kevin and a few others felt the need to scrawl their names next to those who did so far longer ago with much more intention. I wonder if the “Kevin + Julie 4ever” means that their still together, or if even one other person other than fucking Kevin and Julie care about their name, or just look upon the defacement sadly as I do.
       These thoughts seeped out of my mind and across my lips as we drove away and parallel to the swell, our trip soon becoming that spent moving, restless, across the landscape. More of a survey for things to further study in depth than observing an isolated wonder as I was hoping.
So, we drove, fleeing the cold in our unpreparedness for the hope that we may just stay warm in our tent that night. It was my girlfriend, my dog, and I, all cramped with too much gear into the cab of a truck. This was in no way our first foray like this, but the first one lacking the old green truck that had served me so well on many an adventure and whose camper shell I had called home on occasion. Instead, we had the new steed, claimed to be mightier but yet unproven. Bright red and lacking the warmth the camper shell had provided, leaving the gear to collect and bounce in the bed.
       It’s always odd to be cold in such an environment and it’s easy to forget that the wind bites to your bones from the inside of the cab in front of the heater. The red hues seem to radiate the heat that the engine pumps through the vents, yet when the car stops and all comes to a rest, it creeps back in through the cracks until the door opens and the wind provides a presence that cannot be ignored.
       We drove through the winding roads surrounded by the rattle and hum from the car and stereo respectively. The landscape was red and composed of long stretches of flat separated by a barrier that the road cleaved a path unto; this black scar upon the landscape so vast yet divided by this path that conquers the open ground and then carves its way up, though, and over any obstacle. Yet even in a small manner the road is limited by the land and therefore the water, as this landscape more than any other was defined by it. Such irony that in a land where there is little of that juice for life, its presence, or even just whispers, memories, or the echoes of yells still exist across every surface. The water still moves here, just as it does everywhere else, but it hides until it can scream with chaos. A dichotomy of serenity punctuated by violence, promised if not always present.
       A lonely drive if it not for the company with me, yet constantly perplexed and awed with the way the land is carved and sculpted into cliffs and canyons. We have set monument valley as the goal, with a roundabout drive from the swell, its several hours by car and spared us from the chill. Yet as we drive through this barren land, a canyons path goosenecks into the soil and rock parallel to the road. It is cut into a flat landscape in a way that it could easily be missed, and its true sinuosity can only be appreciated by those that fly above it. We were on some numbered highway in the southern stretches away from the population, truly empty.
       An old ford winds down a rough BLM road and goes across the canyon bottom, through a drainage under the highway and seems to magically find its way up the cliff to where my truck hurtles past. This old road to nowhere seems to be an untouched secret ripe for capture. A hidden gem in the Utah badlands that perhaps I can find, a piece of special past that I can touch and relish in for a moment, knowing that I have seen a sight that few others have. A narcissistic feast of awe at the land.
SO, I turn around and enter where this fellow drove out. As I drive past him, I give him a smile and a wave and turn into this road to a hidden treasure and expect a jaunty return as us two travelers pass, but instead I receive a stare of animosity and the bark from a dog in the back of his truck. Putting this from my mind and continuing down from here I catch a glimpse of perhaps why. Painted upon the entrance to this exists a message few who pass this road could ignore: “stolen lands from the Dineh, Ute, Zuni” and “Fuck U.S. land management” indicating that I too am a trespasser upon this canyon and once again, long ago, it had been claimed as home.
Yet I couldn’t resist a road not yet driven into the wild, so venturing up the road to the other side of the canyon my truck protested though, we continued to only have our path barred by a gate that looked older than the collected years of the truck, molly, Maeve, and I together. I had driven through perhaps a dozen gates just today, it was how the Utah backcountry worked most times, as cattle were frequent. But this gate had the same animosity as the old man.
The sun cast an amber hue of sunset soon to come even though it was only a few hours past noon as I pondered this gate from the driver’s seat, not yet committing to opening it or turning around, just contemplating this hostile landscape and a sense of unbelonging.
Perhaps some treasures are better left for those who will actually treasure them.
We decided the highway had more to offer than this empty landscape far from anything and upon turning I saw the highway and the old blue truck we had passed on it. The old man was watching me decide what to do and where to go. I’m not sure what he wanted to know and I’m not sure where the gate lead, but I think I made the right call in leaving some wonder in the back of the canyon for those that knew it better than I.
Later that night, with the faint glow of a propane heater that was, perhaps inadvisably, the only source of warmth in the tent, I would think back upon that man’s animosity, the animosity of the land, the cold, and the desert in general and wonder why we do this? Drive headfirst into the unknown only to suffer. I don’t have any worthwhile answers to leave you with, but when the sun rose and I found myself in a warm car drinking shitty coffee from a McDonalds in the middle of a town I can’t remember the name of, I certainly appreciated it more than the cup of coffee I had the morning before in the routine of my home.
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