zion/bryce canyon: day 2

Day 2

The wind is more than we bargained for, let alone the rain. I opted to wear shorts in light of yesterday’s 80-some degrees, but at least I have my Gortex waterproof windbreaker.

Today three of us are in the Kolob Canyon portion of Zion National Park, northwest of the main park. I’m joining two of the park archaeologists for another excursion into a different past. With shovels and a rake, we trek an easy 2 ½ miles to check on a couple of cabins built between 1920 and 1930 by Mormon settlers. In Idaho, the old cabins I’m accustomed to seeing belonged to miners, so it’s a bit odd to me that these particular one-room structures were built as summer or vacation homes.

We cross Taylor Creek again and again, padding through the damp pink earth and gravel, protected from the wind at least now that we’re down in the canyon. The streambed glows a warm salmon pink, confetti-strewn with fallen yellow leaves. On the way in, my companions Jeremy and Dan point out what they call “the luckiest cottonwood tree in Zion National Park” – a wind-curled tree of damp-darkened bark with a few gold leaves left, standing only inches away from where an enormous red boulder came to rest after tumbling from the canyon wall opposite.

At the second cabin we move a pile of milled wood, left over from another project, out of sight, climbing through the trees and scattering the pieces. We are surrounded by tree-sprays of damp yellow leaves. Then we bend into the work of earth moving, shoveling and raking away a berm of (thankfully) soft earth next to the cabin. After lunch and some photographic documentation, we head back as a steady light rain digs its heels in.

This may not sound like fun to most people – I am on vacation, and I even paid to do this. In the rain. (Well, I didn’t anticipate that part.) But I am happy in my adventure, exploring and discovering and helping and learning, because this is the kind of thing I love to do, the kind of thing I still wonder if I should have headed toward long ago in college. And to be in this place, in this kind of landscape, is instant inspiration.

As we walk out we marvel again at the effect of this unusual weather here, its added drama and dimension. The sky hangs low, white mist drifting and draping over the tops of the red cliffs and formations around us. It reminds me briefly of pictures I’ve seen of China, but surprising and vivid with color.

Driving back to the main park, damp and muddy and chilled, we leave the cloud cover and come into the bright desert sun. Behind us, a wide, fat rainbow stretches across the road, grinning like a Cheshire cat, upside down.