Sleeping outside for five nights, I breathed in Zion.
Sitting near my tent each evening, collecting myself from my day, I made a simple camp dinner and wrote in my journal, hearing the same daily rhythm of sounds: the shuffle and clink and voices as tents were raised, camps established, meals prepared or cleaned up, campfires built, toothbrushes, hats and flashlights found. But beyond the sounds of temporary human hubbub (we are just visitors here), I found the greater voice of this place: cricket song rising as dusk set in; aspen leaves, their yellow glow dimmed by evening, rustling overhead in the clear desert wind; the star-crystalled dark night sky; the towering presence of the red-cliff formation called the Watchman, tall and tapered like a vast rock sail at the edge of the campground. I believe these outside nights let the soul of this place come into me, whispering into my dreams, breathing through my mind and skin like an intuition, or a healing, or a promise. I will give up a shower or two for that.
But it was the days that revealed the essential beauty here. Surrounded by landscapes that both lifted and diminished me with their scope and intensity of color, I explored and discovered.
