Days 14 &15: UT: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Destination: Escalante, UT - 190 miles

The drive to Escalante, UT braided past Zion and edged along Bryce Canyon for three hours northeast from our beautiful stay at Lake Powell.  Justin jumped out of the RV every few minutes to take pictures or stare never having seen anything like this place. The beautiful Sevier River danced alongside the road in its shimmering splendor that captured us like we had acquired a sweet tooth after having missed out on chocolate for years. The river struck us like spunk!  

 We immediately loved the place we picked to stay at in Escalante.  It's called Canyons of Escalante RV Park. After our introduction to mesas, hoodoos and buttes, we were enchanted with the road and now this little town. Toni wasn't there when we arrived, despite answering the phone earlier when I called her in Kanab, however her significant other Andre was there to welcome us.  They don't officially open until Spring break time, but they were happy to have us, even though they had pipes that burst in January that shut down their bathrooms.  We were pretty self sufficient, so we just needed a place to pull in.  Marilyn, Justin and I felt very comfortable in Escalante.  It's the type of small town that for some reason grabs a hold of you and tells you its ok to breathe for a good long while and stop thinking about the deadlocks, dead ends and dead wrong. Andre and I talked for a bit about his Iranian past.  He moved here right before the Shah was brought to America for medical reasons after the Shah's fall in the late 1970s. We talked about the lack of diplomatic relations between America and Iran and he said that given the tense relations, it's not smart for Americans to travel there, since it doesn't really take much for them to find something to use as a political bone to pick with the US. It seems that an American tourist suffers at the loss of amicable relations and would be ill-advised to think otherwise.  We talked about the use of censorship in various governments to control how people think and I told him that I had really enjoyed a book titled, "Reading Lolita in Iran" set during the heightening stage of the revolution. 

I ended up running into Toni at the restaurant next door where she also works. Toni has a beautiful spirit as does Andre. It's called the Circle D. We ate a delicious meal near a fire.  Marilyn, Justin and I caught up on family events and how excited we were that we were all going to a new place tomorrow to see even more geological wonders. I got to at times whip out my geology lessons that I still remember about the area and how it formed to Justin and Marilyn's delight, which was often confirmed on interpretive signs along the road or trail just in case I forgot what SF State or Cal State LA professors taught me long ago. 

Smiles formed on my face when on occasion I saw Wallace Stegner quoted on interpretive signs.  He wrote a book that I loved in college that was entitled, "Angle of Repose." Stegner must have spent some time in Escalante while he prominently advocated for a national preservation system be created to protect the desert landscape found where the Grand Staircase National Monument stands. Here I was to see what Stegner saw then. He once observed that "the natural world is a screen onto which we project our own images." He also observed, "The Utah deserts and plateaus and canyons are not a country of big returns, but a country of spiritual healing, incomparable for contemplation, meditation, solitude, quiet, awe, peace of mind and body. We were born of wilderness, and we respond to it more than we sometimes realize. We depend upon it increasingly for relief from the termite life we have created. Factories, power plants, resorts, we can make anywhere. Wilderness, once we have given it up, is beyond our reconstruction."

As I stared at the sandstone formations, I felt the wind and sandstone hand me a renewed invitation to feel its constant enterprise that forms nothing newer than a new cut in a stone or a shift in pebbles down a dry wash and creates no new waste in its operation. It begged that I let go of the repose and deadening ascribed to me resulting from being so far removed within to the purposes of open spaces. It reminded me that the feeling of distress and turmoil I feel at the thought of our inferior collective stature we assign to our environment speaks of the untruthfulness of environmental ethics and values of those who daily look upon our natural world without appreciation and concern for its well being. Can humankind risk so little to switch aversion to harmony with wandering in order to feel what rootedness irregularity brings when we see wilderness and we choose to consider its worth beyond subverting its essence?  

I long for a renewed deeper relationship with nature.

We explored Hole in the Rock Road, stopping at Devils Garden Natural Area, roughly 13 miles from scenic Highway 12. It's a gravel road that had me and Mel seeing double for several miles as a result of the reverberations. 

 

We headed out of Devils Garden backtracking a few miles so that we could ride our bikes in the Cedar Wash area.  

Although we did manage to ride our bikes on the gravel road, Marilyn ended up with broken chain.  Justin and I tried to ride our bikes all the way to the natural bridge but we missed Marilyn and went back to enjoy the rest of the evening together.  Each of us really enjoyed walking through Escalante later that evening when we decided to eat at the local fast food restaurant "Nemos." There is a little bit of a folklore history associated with Nemos.  It might be fast food but it's their only location. The story, even cited by the National Park Service, goes that that Nemo refers to an inscription that an aspiring artist and adventurer Everett Ruess left in 1934 in Davis Gulch.  Everett Ruess was 20 at the time and wanted to wander wild areas, including canyons. He got to know farmers and residents of Escalante and then went off into the Escalante canyons.  For four months, his parents didn't hear from him. After a formal search began, they found his burros in Davis Gulch and the inscription "Nemo, 1934." His parents thought it might mean, "no one."  Some people speculate, including the guy working at Nemos that night, think that Everett may have made enemies with cattle rustlers and that he may have been murdered. Other rumors persist. 

The briskness of the night led us to start another fire back at the campground especially since we'd purchased from wood from Andre earlier in the day. We built an amazing fire and when the winds came running through that canyonland, we pulled our toes a little further towards ourselves, but we didn't stand too far away from the fire, embracing the heat and enjoying the flicker of dancing flames as we enjoyed being close to each other.  Even though we arrived at Escalante off season and the place wasn't booming like we bet it is with bikers, ATVers, and hikers in spring, summer and fall, we enjoyed the peace and quiet and getting Devils Garden to ourselves.  We rarely saw another person.  It gave all of us time to just breathe and feel the space amongst us three.