zion/bryce canyon: day 3

Day 3

Up and out of the tent with the chill sunrise, a breakfast of hard boiled eggs, banana bread and grapefruit juice, and the day is mine.

I head east, through morning’s light on red canyon rock. Canyon Overlook trail, off the park’s east road and just past the rock tunnel, is short, but so filled with deserty goodness that I take my time. Layered sandstone canyon walls, beehive rock formations, sculptures of uptwisted tree roots, juniper and prickly pear, all red and green and yellow under a clear blue sky. Everything is a picture. But I am camping, and have no ready way to recharge my camera battery, so I wrestle between my photographic euphoria and a sense of rationing. The desert, of course, does not move one to moderation. It is a place of extremes, be it weather, terrain, scale or beauty. I do my best.

Back to camp for an early lunch, and then I catch the shuttle up the main canyon for the “real” hikes. Just riding up the canyon is a visual feast. The rust-red sandstone walls tower so far above that I see their tops through the bus’s skylights.

I warm up for some climbing with a short, steep walk to Weeping Rock – an enchanted hanging garden in a rock alcove, constantly raining a delicate veil of groundwater across its opening. Then on to Hidden Canyon, a steep and sometimes dicey mile up switchbacks, carved stone steps, and eventually slanting white-orange sandstone terraces, adorned with chains for the hapless hiker to hang onto. As the path lifts me steadily up, I can look across in any direction to thousand foot cliff faces of russet or white, while occasional pines and aspens greet me at turns in the trail. At the top, the entrance to Hidden Canyon, I scramble a quarter mile through sand and boulders through the narrow rock-walled alley to see a freestanding grey stone arch, abiding quietly out of sight of most visitors.

By the time I’m descending back down the tilting inclines of the trail, I am enraptured. I’ve soaked in the heart-ravaging beauty of this place the way a dry sponge gasps up water, and I am overflowing with it. So when I reach the fork that marks the beginning of the 8 mile round trip trail to Observation Point, and as I sit on a low stone bench munching my farmers’ market honeycrisp apple, cheese and almonds, something in me clicks. Through sheer inspiration I decide I am capable of more than I thought. And although it is already 3:30 in the afternoon, I begin my next climb—this one 2100 feet, and the longest of the day.

I set a deliberate pace. Most people hike this trail for the spectacular views at the end. But at the first bend, and at every single turn thereafter, the landscape ahead of me folds and unfolds into enchanted scenes of texture, sculptural shapes and extraordinary colors. Walls and alleys rise in ochre and bright yellow, vivid orange and white and salmon-rose. Green ponderosa pines and junipers, carved rock strata, sandy washes and craggy peaks all add their unique dimension to the terrain. Gold oak leaves flutter here and there like ornaments, or rare birds.

The color palettes and scope of this type of landscape break down the crust of our habitual thinking like a fresh breeze in a stale room. I feel like a small child waking from a nap and rubbing sleepy eyes open for the first time. The plodding daily routine I knew at home, that had begun to deaden my sense of my own life, doesn’t stand a chance against this kind of power, Nature’s power. And I learn how important it is to go INTO the canyons, to become a part of what's there, to feel it all around me rather than catching brief views from cars or rims. Maybe this is the lesson that Zion gives me, to apply to that numb life of mine when I go home.

I make it to the top, legs somewhat rubbery at the final switchbacks, but with a fresh reservoir of awe to draw on later. The view is, of course, inspiring—oddly, the views here keep looking to me like gigantic painted movie backdrops, cinematic in scale and with a certain unapproachable artistic presence, like a sweeping scene from Gone With the Wind, camera-softened at the edges for added feeling.

Except that here, no added feeling is necessary.