Tag: outdoor

Longing for Goblin Land

The stars never shined so bright as they did on that summer night more than 30 years ago.  Lying on my back in a sleeping bag, on the sandstone and without a tent, I stared up into a vast black sea, with floating diamonds, and for the first time felt hopelessly small in the universe and yet somehow still important.  

I was exhausted but couldn’t let myself fall asleep just yet–not with The Milky Way, Orion’s Belt, Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, hovering over me like an open book.    

While never much of an astronomer, I could still appreciate a sky without light pollution, especially compared to the washed out skies I knew from the big city.  I had learned about the constellations during field trips to Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake.  But that dark, domed theater, made for city-slickers, was just a figment compared to the view of the galaxy before me now–layer upon layer in 3D.    

Milky Way, astronomy.com/news. NASA

Our Boy Scout troop had stopped here as part of a week-long trip to the San Rafael Swell in Southeastern Utah.  For dinner we had chili and salad, significant because, like the night sky, it was the first time I had truly appreciated vegetables.  It wasn’t easy for a teenage boy to admit, but that crisp lettuce, straight out of the cooler, was the remedy to a long day of parched travel. 

We’d been riding in a white Ford passenger van, pulling a trailer of float-tubes, mountain-bikes, Cheetos and sodas for about two days.  The van looked similar to the one neighborhood moms had warned us about back home–always driven by some scraggly, bearded man looking to lure kids with candy and then whisk them away forever.  But the stranger probably would’ve jumped out of this van at highway speeds, because it was already overloaded with loud and dusty boys, tweaked out on sugar.  

Looking back, I marvel at the planning and logistics that must’ve gone into this trip.  The real ones driving the van–those beleaguered scout leaders–had done a lot of thinking.  They were just part-time adventurers, willing to leave desk jobs in the city to take unruly boys into potential danger.  They’d have to endure terrible scrutiny these days to even try it.  Maybe rightly so.  

Of course none of it could’ve been considered “high adventure,” but such travel shouldn’t be underestimated.  Although I was young and naive, I questioned the trip myself.  Was there a plan to keep gas in the van when service stations were so few and far between?  Was there a medical plan?  Did we have enough water?  And, probably the most important question, did anyone really know where we were going out in this vast and fiery place?  

One of the leaders had experience traveling the area–something about riding around in a Jeep with his father, a geologist for the Bureau of Land Management.  I took comfort in this, but also considered how badly the rest of us would suffer without him.  What if he fell off a cliff or was taken by a rattlesnake?  No one had phones back then.  We could be stranded for days before someone found us.  In some ways I feared it.  In other ways I hoped for it…          

A desert wildflower. Photo by ZT.

The dirt road was part of a web of backcountry trails in Southeastern Utah, some of the most remote wilderness in the U.S, located near Capitol Reef National Park.  Dusty and washboarded, it had taken us parallel with the Swell and, if I can recall, toward the town of Hanksville.  

At one point we passed near the Muddy River, more of a creek actually, which meandered through a respectable pattern of hidden grottos and alluring canyons.  We’d spent the afternoon float-tubing here, at times walking on our hands while our legs trailed behind.      

I remember the water was cold (from June runoff) and sand went everywhere–up our shorts, between our toes and into our ears and hair.  We’d spent more time in the water than was probably smart, only crawling out when it seemed we were just short of hypothermia.  

Once out of the creek, however, we found sun-soaked boulders along the bank.  Lying on these, shivering and wet, it was possible to experience one of the greatest warming sensations known to man, enough to make us envy the lizards we’d sent scattering to get there.    

After drying off as much as possible, we were back on the road, singing songs, eating junk food and telling stories and jokes until we grew hoarse.  Sometimes we were forced back out of the van and compelled to ride our bikes ahead of it.  Something had been said among the adults about us needing fresh air and a “more direct experience with nature.”  

We complained, of course.  But any sense of punishment quickly vanished.  While riding our bikes, out from behind van windows, the spectacular views came to life.  

All along the plateau we could see the Swell–that long spine of cream-colored rock, rising up like a dragon from a desert ocean.  At times there were small groups of pronghorn antelope in the foreground, grazing on patches of grass between sagebrush.  Next to the road, we saw globemallow and sego lily and could hear the calls of meadowlarks nearby.  All of this was hard to capture in memory.  Yet one thing was certain: the Swell had caused my heart for the wilderness to swell.  

Pronghorn near the San Rafael Swell. Photo by ZT

Being the remnant of a giant rock dome some 75 miles long and 40 miles wide, the bulk of the Swell was formed by tremendous geologic pressure.  This upturned sandstone was then subjected to the subtle carvings of wind and water for millions of years.  

Because the region is more inaccessible than many of the national parks in Utah, the scenery is not just uniquely carved, but carries with it a real sense of solitude and distance.  Some of these wilderness areas are now more protected than they were back then, a contentious issue at times, but the reality of a world that is increasingly overrun.      

In 2019, Congress designated the San Rafael Swell Recreation Area (approximately 217,000 acres), as part of the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management and Recreation Act.  According to the BLM, the region features “magnificent badlands of brightly colored and wildly eroded sandstone formations, deep canyons, and giant plates of stone tilted upright through massive geological upheaval.”  (Bureau of Land Management, San Rafael Swell Recreation Area https://www.blm.gov/utso/grd/san-rafael-swell-rec-area )  

A few miles southeast of the Swell is a valley of hoodoos, called “goblins” because of the creature-like shapes they take under changing light.  It was here in Goblin Valley that we spent one of the last nights of the trip.   

Goblin Valley, Utah. Photo by ZT

After dinner, we played a game of “steal the flag.”  What could be wrong with eight boys turned loose into a labyrinth, guided only by the moon–to run through, climb over, fall from or even be crushed by boulders?  Despite the risks, this daring permission kept us running and hiding until well after sundown.     

When “quiet time” arrived in the park, we took a head count and then staggered and giggled our way back to camp–an open slab overlooking the valley.  From this moonlit viewpoint, I could see just how many goblins lived here, clustered together in a mass of gnarled stone like a geological mosh pit.  

Now that the party had died down, the stillness that descended was heavy and sublime.  Wearily, we unrolled our sleeping bags.  I was puzzled at first, maybe even troubled, to see that we didn’t have tents; I’d never slept out in the open before.  What about snakes, spiders, scorpions…thunderstorms?  

Too tired to care for long, I unzipped the sleeping bag and wedged myself inside.  Thankfully I rolled onto my back before finally closing my eyes.  And there it was, the night sky that would eventually send me into sleep and into dreams that could be no more vivid than all I had already seen.

Sunset and Outstretched Arms

The path along the Virgin River was flooded a few nights ago as we surveyed the route from the top of the trailhead. Ample rains had left mud and about eight inches of water for nearly a hundred yards along the trail.  

It wasn’t exactly an impasse, just cause for pause.  We decided to press on, knowing that hiking isn’t just about sightseeing and meandering.  Sometimes there should be some struggle–some challenge to overcome.     

And, despite the mud and a few dangerous looking Chollas close to the trail, it was settling down to be a beautiful evening.  The surrounding canyon walls reflected the lowering sunlight which sparked colors among a few patches of early wildflowers and whitewashed the log jams and snags of deadwood along the floodplain.     

Joshua blooms in the Virgin River Gorge

Soon we were making our way around the dirty puddles, over higher ground, sidestepping carefully at times between creosote and a barbed wire fence.  Once back on the BLM trail headed south, my eyes raised from my feet to the skies.  All around us was the settling peace of the desert at dusk.

As I often do while hiking, I thought about the natural (and unnatural) history of the scene.  The Virgin River Gorge descends on a fairly steep grade from Southwestern Utah through the Arizona Strip and toward Las Vegas.  It’s mostly known as a route for Interstate 15, whose footprint was blasted out of the rocks in 1973 as one of the costliest projects in the history of the Interstate system. 

“The Gorge,” as it’s often called, is notorious among locals for having steep curves, brainless drivers and a seemingly never-ending barrage of construction projects.  The highway has claimed many lives over the years and has witnessed some of the most catastrophic vehicular events imaginable.  That narrow stretch of sky between canyon rims has too often ushered the passing of both smoke and souls.    

Yet, for all its treachery, the highway is nestled inside a respectable display of desert beauty.  The canyon walls, some of them hundreds of feet high, are supported by steep sloping foothills peppered with fallen boulders and hemmed by long deep ravines.  

The Gorge lies on the upper reaches of the Mojave Desert at its eastern border with the Colorado Plateau.  Accordingly, it has some of the typical vegetation of the Basin and Range Province of Nevada and California merging with the scrub and forbidding rockscapes of the higher elevations.  This meeting of biomes, as is true in other places on earth, leads to an array of biodiversity.

On this night the young grasses were greener than perhaps I’d ever seen them, thanks to several “atmospheric rivers” that have brought record amounts of rain.  Yucca, creosote, willow and the occasional barrel cactus all punctuated the slopes.  

Yet the tallest and most prominent plants were the Joshua trees, which happened to be in bloom.  Often in clusters, with spiny leaves on “outstretched” branches, they could be seen as sentinels over the landscape–that is if attaching such human characteristics can be tolerated.  

I’m not the first one to do so.  As the early pioneers described, the Joshua trees and their outstretched branches were like arms open in supplication to weary travelers of which there have been many.  For 10,000 years, in fact, people have been traveling and inhabiting the gorge.  The first were Mammoth hunters and later the Desert Culture people who lived a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle here.  

Between 200 A.D. and 700 A.D., the Anasazi, part of the pueblo culture of the Colorado Plateau, carried on farming in the area.  Later the Paiutes settled and returned to a more Desert Culture lifeway.  

In 1776 two Franciscan friars, Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Sylvestre Velez de Escalante, entered the region with a small party searching for a route between New Mexico and the California missions.  Their effort fell short and they turned back to Santa Fe.

Later, in the early 1800’s, the route sought by the friars became a reality for fur trappers and Mexican traders who blazed what became known as the Old Spanish Trail.  The famous explorer Jedediah S. Smith passed through the gorge in September of 1826, followed by others like him. 

From 1830 to 1848, Mexican traders from Santa Fe and Taos took annual caravans through the area.  However, it appeared they usually made a more manageable crossing using the Beaver Dam Mountains (now the route for Old Highway 91) some 15 miles to the north.  

At about the same time as the trader caravans, the Mormons began to use the same route to connect growing communities in Utah with goods in Los Angeles.  (Courtesy BLM kiosk at Virgin River Gorge Recreation Area “A Thoroughfare of History”)  

A trailside cactus filters sunlight

There was no sign of pioneers or Franciscan friars this evening.  And thankfully we were down below the highway where modern day traders and vacationers now rumbled past.  Like hobbits sneaking toward Mordor, we pressed on while the automotive orcs marched on the pass above us.  

Sometimes we could hear the traffic, which undoubtedly diminished our peace.  But it was still possible to ignore the sounds and focus more on what the canyon really is and has been all along: the home of a river, a stairway of sorts from the high tables of red rock into the frying pan of the Mojave–a place where wildlife displays its fortitude against the elements and man.       

When we reached the riverbank, we found the trail impassable due to spring runoff.  Swift currents of brown silty water rushed downward toward Lake Mead.  While not very deep, the speed with which the water passed was enough to prevent any further travel.  

This time turning back, we followed a sandbank to the East, through stands of willow still bare from the long winter.  In the sand we saw the tracks of insects and animals.  Stink bugs, centipedes, the long rear paws and small forepaws of jackrabbits.  There was the occasional lizard track mingled with the doodles, love notes and sand castles from children who had come before.    

After returning to the trailhead, we decided to take one more hike to the top of the hill above the campground.  The blooms on the Joshua trees were more ornate here and from this vantage we could see just how tightly the highway and surrounding rock had been fit together.  

As the sun dipped below the horizon, it cast a purple light over the canyon rim.  The bats were beginning their nightly flittering, hopefully, to eat their fill.  It was an open and glowing ending to a muddy and obstructed start.  A reminder that journeys, like places, can change.  And sometimes they can be entirely different all at once.