I was listening to this podcast the other day while road tripping through the desert and found myself both saddened and furious.  In Stuff You Should Know’s Will the moon save humanity?, Josh and Chuck are pondering the end of the world and discussing projects that may save humanity.

In the intro they discuss projects such as Norway’s “Doomsday” Seed Vault and the British DNA depository which supposedly can rebuild an entire ecosystem from plant, animal, and human DNA stores. They wonder, “Which ecosystem?” do we have the power to rebuild.  “Is it a desert? Cuz who really wants to rebuild that?”  Nobody, they agree.

Views From the Hidden Valley Trail - Moab, Utah

Well I would! Begin sadness…

I know this whole desert as wasteland belief is widely held but I really don’t understand how the desert got such a bum rap.  Most people that have actually been to the desert find themselves totally awestruck and surprised by both its simplicity and beauty.  The tough part seems to get people there in the first place…

Cholla Cactus and Joshua Trees in the Mojave National Preserve

I have to admit the beauty of the desert didn’t immediately take me over but more slowly captured my spirit.

I’ve since devoured the words of Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, and Katie Lee.  I longed for their gift of story telling – their ability to move people into action.  Their words have made desert virgins chuck everything to experience Desert Solitaire from the eyes of Ed.  They have inspired others to devote their being to protecting unnamed canyons and relics of cultures that came before us and moved some to risk their own freedom trying to stop quasi-legal oil and gas leases.

I tried to explain how places with names like Onion Creek, Elephant Canyon, Hatch Wash made me feel – what they stirred inside of me.  On paper I was wordless, but in spirit I was spewing flawless prose.

And so I’ve decided to giveaway the words of others. I want to share the stories that have so moved me with the hopes of changing just one person’s belief of the desert as barren and meaningless.

I will start with Edward Abbey’s classic, Desert Solitaire.  This is Abbey’s memoir of his years as a ranger at Arches National Monument (now National Park) outside of Moab, Utah.  It is a great intro to environmentalism and the growing threats of mining, the auto industry, and tourism on our fragile wilderness.  Both thought-provoking and rebel-rousing, Desert Solitaire has moved pacifists to grab the nearest monkey wrench and raise some hell.

Balanced Rock at Arches National Park

Like all free things there is a catch.  After reading the book you must either give the book to someone else and/or let me know (in just a few sentences) what you got out of the book.  Did you gain any new insights?  Did the book inspire you in anyway or do you still strongly advocate strip mining? You will then be featured in the blog and receive much fame and link love-age.

To enter simply leave a comment (perhaps some desert thoughts) before April 20, 2010 and the winner will be chosen randomly and announced April, 21, 2010.

Hiking Through Chesler Park - Needles District, Canyonlands National Park

To conclude, here are some words from Ed in Desert Solitaire:

“Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”

Flowering Cactus in Joshua Tree National Park

I’ve been a bit absent in the blogosphere this week – too busy celebrating my birthday, entertaining family visitors, and enjoying the 2 plus feet of snow we got in the Wasatch while also trying to catch up with work and recover from my SEND at the Buffalo 50K this past weekend.

So I finished the big race and knocked off numero dos on the life list.  I did it and surprised the hell out of myself.  I don’t think I have ever been so proud of myself.  Not just because I finished the race but also because I finished the race smiling.

Can't believe I am still smiling

The only goal I had for the race was to finish.  I wasn’t aiming for any specific time, I just wanted to make it across the finish line.  Well I guess I had one more goal and that was to finish the race with a smile on my face.  I tend to crash or hurl during the last few miles of the race and usually cross the finish line looking super pissed off.

One unfortunate thing about running in the desert is that there are no trees (or really anything) to obscure your view.  I could see the finish line for miles before I ever got there, which I thought would be torturous but instead rejuvenated me.  I have no idea how I could feel suddenly energized after being on my feet for 7 hours – maybe some sort of evolutionary survival instinct kicked in.  I couldn’t have shed that smile off my face if someone paid me.  I probably ran that last mile faster than any of the other 31 and approached the finish line laughing and smiling.  I was elated or quite possibly delirious.

Feeling stoked pre-race

Halfway through the race I had made a promise to myself that I would never do this again and now I am searching race listings for another.  I definitely draw the line at the 50K though (during my race there was a simultaneous 50-miler, those people must be nuts).  Now that I know I can run a 50K  I want to see if I can pick up the pace a little (since I ran super slow).

Here’s a bit more about the race itself if you’re interested.

Oh so cold at the start!

The Buffalo 50K is on Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake and involves 2-laps of a sixteen-mile course with amazing views of the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch, Oquirrh, and Stansbury Mountains.  The course is a mix of double-track and some seriously awesome single-track.  The trail for the most part is rolling with a bunch of steep ascents thrown in.  Quite sandy at times, my new Dirty Girl Gaiters worked fabulous – not only are they super cute, I didn’t even get a grain of sand in the shoes.

The race started at 8am and oh was it chilly.  It was around 35 degrees and the wind whipping off the lake made it feel even colder.  My toes were totally numb the first few miles until we crested the first big hill and got a little sun.  The rest of the day was absolutely gorgeous, the most perfect day I could imagine.

Views of the Great Salt Lake from Antelope Island

My hip flexors cramped up pretty bad at the halfway point and I am pretty sure I won’t do a race again where you need to do multiple laps of the course.  Imagine running 16 miles just so you can return to the same place you started and do it all over again.  Laps suck!  With crampy hips and a crappy attitude, I definitely felt like quitting at this point but I just kept going and eventually got over the hump.

The race peeps were wonderful and I really love the energy of these races.  I didn’t hear a single negative word or catch a single negative vibe out on the race course.  All the other racers are encouraging and supportive – even the pukers didn’t have an ill word to say.  At around the 27-mile point I pass a man that looks like utter death and ask him how he’s doing and he responds, “Great!  I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day.”  Sheesh I wish the rest of my world was like this.

The Buffalo of Antelope Island

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
~Edward Abbey

One of the first places I wanted to visit after ending up in Salt Lake City (for reasons still unbeknownst to me) was the Great Salt Lake.  Obviously I knew that the lake was salty but I had imagined it as this big recreation area with beaches and lots of people floating about – a place I planned on spending much of the summer.  In truth, it was absolutely disgusting, sort of cesspool like.  The lake was covered with a thick layer of flies, smelled worse then rotten eggs, and there was garbage everywhere.  No way was I going to lay in a foot in that cesspit.

I blamed my misguided fantasies on Utah Tourism brochures – The lakes turquoise waters and white sand beaches are popular with swimmers and sunbathers – MY ASS!

Let’s just says it as it is – the lake is polluted as hell due to industrial runoff and when the waters are low the smell of insect decay makes you want to hurl.  All those strange looking evaporation ponds at the edge of the lake and loads of mineral extracting machinery – make the Great Salt Lake look like some creeped out version of Mars when viewed from above during landing at the SLC airport.

The Great Salt Lake has been raped, pillaged, polluted and essentially forgotten in the eyes of the average Utah and in that I have learned to love it.

The Salt Lake’s high salinity makes it uninhabitable except for a few species of brine shrimp (aka sea monkeys) and algae but the shores of the lake are a critical habitat for migratory birds.  The shores of the Salt Lake were once home to Pink Floyd, a Chilean flamingo that escaped from the Salt Lake City’s Tracy Aviary in 1990.  Pink Floyd was often seen socializing with all the other gulls and dining off brine shrimp.  Floyd appeared so content and happy at the lake they decided not to capture him.  He was last sighted somewhere in Idaho in 2005.

Anyway… I wanted to share some photos of the lake I have grown to love.  This winter while the trails of Salt Lake’s Wasatch Mountains were packed with snow and mud I took to the trails of the Great Salt Lake’s Islands where there is always plenty of sun, beauty and dry trail.

Views of the Great Salt Lake from Split Rock Trail on Antelope Island

Running the Great Salt Lake's Stansbury Island Trail

Buffalo Sightings on Antelope Island

Sunset at Stansbury Island's Lake Viewpoint

I have only just started to explore the San Rafael Swell and am totally overwhelmed with its beauty and potential for exploration.  The Swell, as it is affectionately called, is a huge maze of winding canyons, sandstone cliffs, and expansive panoramas located in a remote section of central Utah.  For years I kept hearing about The Swell – The Swell but really had no idea where or what it was exactly.  I first detailed a visit to the southern portion of the San Rafael Swell in Running and Dancing with Goblins and was completely blown away by the splendor of the northern part this past weekend.

Views from the Wedge Overlook

The San Rafael Swell is about 2000 square miles of public land located in pretty much the dead center of Utah.  The Swell is just as amazing as any one of Utah’s National Parks but has somehow missed out on any type of serious federal protection.  The San Rafael Swell has been repeatedly proposed as a national park but for one reason or another has never attained the status.  In 2002 the area was proposed to receive National Monument status but Bush never granted the Swell the protection it so desperately needs.

The San Rafael River

I guess the plus side to the Swell having just mere public land status means lots of free camping and basically no fees of any kind.  We found what just might be my favorite camp spot ever just off of Mexican Mountain Road.  The site was on a mini plateau overlooking the windy San Rafael River below with incredible panoramas of the towering sandstone cliffs and mesas and peaks.  My fave part of the site was the fire pit teetering on the edge of a cliff.

Panoramic Views From our Bed in the Back of Rubes

Enjoying the Morning Coffee at the Fire Pit on the Edge of a Cliff

Unfortunately the downside to the Swell lacking any real wilderness protection means the area is pretty beat up by unrestricted off-road vehicle use and exploitation by mining and cattle grazing.  Sadly many ancient sites we visited were vandalized and defaced.  Native Americans once inhabited the Swell and these early cultures left clues to their mysterious history through many pictograph and petroglyph panels found throughout the area.

Pictographs at Buckhorn Wash

The San Rafael Swell, with its dizzyingly disorienting canyons, was also a popular hideout for western outlaws.  Butch Cassidy and his gang hid out in the mazelike labyrinths of the San Rafael Swell and successfully evaded the law.

We saw a ton of petroglyphs and pictographs, unsuccessfully hunted for some dinosaur tracks, visited the Wedge Overlook also known as the Little Grand Canyon, and scouted out some climbing areas.  I also saw my first big horn sheep and wow did he look both super cute and mean as hell.  I didn’t get a good photo for fear that he would ram me.

Ram Butt

The world speaks in such mysterious ways sometimes….

I had just finished a post whining about my lack of desire to return to Salt Lake City in the coming weeks and then the next morning boarded a plane to St. Louis to visit my bestest friend in the world.  Plane then gets delayed in Colorado and I miss my connection in Salt Lake City forcing me to spend the night in Utah.  I hadn’t been ‘home’ in two months and was only expecting to view the city I have called home for the last 8-years from the bitty plane window.

I fly on average 5-10 times a year and find it funny that I have never ever missed a connection, although some times it has been really close.  And then I get stuck overnight in the one place I am trying to break free from.

Salt Lake isn’t a bad place.  It is just that I had plans, I wanted to live in many places – travel, see the world – I didn’t expect to get wedded to one place.

My lovely surprise evening in Salt Lake City was well spent.  Went to my fave restaurant, had a few too many of my favorite microbrews, saw good friends, slept in my own bed, got reunited with my pet cockatiel Frank, checked my heaping pile of mail for unpaid bills, and had powerful memories evoked about the city and the home I still have there.

Well I think for now I will return to Salt Lake after Thanksgiving and vow myself to once again try and make this place my home.

It doesn’t have to mean forever.  It’s cheap.  The people I love are there.  The mountains and opportunities therein are plentiful.  Plus, Salt Lake has made a great home base for getting out and exploring the globe.

I am obsessed, thoroughly desert obsessed.  With all the money I have spent traveling nearly every weekend to the remarkably beautiful Utah desert I could have surely by now saved up for a year abroad.  My travel lust list is so long it almost stresses me out – so much that I have to add places I have already been to the list so I can check them off and make it look like I have actually been somewhere.

Sure there are so many places I would like to travel to but my heart is so solidly stuck on the red rock canyonlands of Southern Utah.  I can travel just a little over 3 hours and be in the most awe-inspiring, core-shaking wildest of places.  The desert either gets you or it doesn’t.  If it does your dreams will be filled with hoo doos, dizzingly steep cliffs, shadows of junipers cast on towering red rock walls, innumerable canyons… and you return again and again and realize there is no amount of exploration that can fulfill that desert hunger.

Arches National Park

I remember this story I don’t remember where I heard it or really any of the details, but a woman –a government official type– looked at a map of Utah and pointed to a spot in the middle and said, “That is it, there is nothing there.  This is where we will store all our that hazardous waste.”  She steps out of a helicopter in the middle of the land she thought was nothing and ready to destroy – but was completely taken aback at the amazing landscape around her and simple said, “I am sorry, I had no idea.”

Oh if I could only put into words what that desert does to me like the beloved Terry Tempest Williams in her book Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert. In RED, Williams finds the perfect words to describe the many shades of red in the canyon country of southern Utah, a place that she also cherishes close to her heart and fights with all her strength to protect.

“The Canyons of southern Utah are giving birth to a Coyote Clan – hundreds, maybe thousands of individuals who are quietly subversive on behalf of the land.  And they are infiltrating out neighborhoods in the most respectable ways, with their long, bushy tails tucked discreetly inside their pants or beneath their skirts… They understand that beauty is not found in the excessive but in what is lean and spare and subtle.”

~ Terry Tempest Williams from RED

Views From Dead Horse Point State Park

It really wasn’t until this weekend that something totally dawned on me.  Why don’t I just move there – I have no real job, expectations, or even desire to get back to Salt Lake City. Sure there is the dearly loved BF – but maybe we can find a way to make this distance thing finally work.  What if there was a way I could split my time between both places?

I find myself yet again in a state of change – one opportunity finishing and my next direction yet to be determined.  The idea of stepping out every day on to the trails surrounding Moab just fills me with absolute delight.  Winter in the desert – oh my.  I could get to know the area as much more than a transient guest –explore less-traveled canyons, befriend the locals, find seldom visited ruins, contribute more to the movements that are trying to protect this rugged yet fragile environment.

Backpacking in the Needles District of Canyonlands

Oh but will it lose its allure if I am to make the place my home?  Will it lose the overwhelming healing powers I feel when I visit?  So much to be decided.

The desert is calling me and I think I finally need to listen.

Lost, Found and Lost Again

One of the West’s biggest mysteries has become a mystery again.  At the age of 20, Everett Reuss went into the Utah desert near Escalante with two burros and was never seen again.  The mystery of Reuss took on legendary proportions.  Some thought Reuss was murdered or that he stepped off a precipitous cliff in the Escalante or that he drowned in the mighty Colorado.  Some believed he had taken a Native American bride or had one reason or another to willingly disappear from society.  Some even believed he was still alive until a report last April stated that Everett’s remains had been found in a remote region in southwest Utah.  It was thought that mystery of Everett Reuss had finally been solved.

In Reuss’s short life he traveled extensively through the wilderness of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.  Reuss spent his early years trekking through remote parts of the High Sierra throughout Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.  He traveled by horse or with burros and explored the uncharted areas of the desert southwest most times solo.

Reuss was a gifted poet, writer, and an artist.  Throughout his travels, Reuss corresponded frequently with his family members and his letters are published in a book – Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty.  His story was also touched on briefly alongside the story of Christopher McCandless in Jon Krakauer’s famed Into the Wild.

Coyote Gulch - Escalante, Utah

I too was moved by Everett’s spirit.  I lived for a short time in Escalante where his spirit was well alive and the mystery strong.  I worked for a man whom after reading Everett’s story left his life in the Great Plains to discover the land that Everett found to be the most beautiful of all his wanderings.  Working in a café, I spoke with so many travelers inspired in some way by Everett to visit the lands of the Escalante.

When I first found out they had identified Reuss’s remains in a remote section in southeastern Utah – I was thrilled.  But then my excitement slowly faded to discontent.  I almost wished those ruins were not confirmed to be his.  Everett Reuss has inspired people into the wilderness for nearly a century and I feared that if he was found his story might not hold onto that same power it had possessed for the last 75 years.

Unfortunately a mystery is only a mystery for so long.  What if Christopher McCandless had survived that winter in Alaska, what if he hadn’t mistaken that plant, what if someone had found him and got him out of there – well then we wouldn’t have that beautiful story that makes us question the way we are living our life, that makes us squeeze our loved ones just a little bit tighter, that makes us think there must be something more than this.

I was shocked by the recent news that the remains found last spring were not that of Everett Reuss.  I felt a bit guilty for once wishing that they weren’t his, at least for the family’s sake.  I am still quite puzzled at how all those DNA and forensic tests had at one point confirmed that the remains were Reuss and now they are totally sure the remains are that of a Native American.  I would think one would want to be pretty damn sure before claiming to solve one of the adventure’s oldest mysteries.  For now the mystery remains.

“I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities.” -from the last letter Ruess sent to his brother, dated November 11, 1934

See the October 21, 2009 New York Times article here.

See the original report of Finding Everett Reuss in National Geographic Adventure here.

The Canyons of the Escalante

]]> http://dirtbagwriter.com/2009/10/the-wests-most-precious-vagabond-everett-reuss-lost-again/feed/ 0 http://dirtbagwriter.com/2009/10/running-and-dancing-with-goblins/ http://dirtbagwriter.com/2009/10/running-and-dancing-with-goblins/#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:22:51 +0000 Writer http://dirtbagwriter.com/?p=488

Just got back from a weekend trip to Goblin Valley in Southern Utah.  Goblin Valley is near the San Rafael Swell, a crazy geological feature located in south-central Utah.  The Swell is a huge upfolding of sandstone and shale that supposedly has similar features to Mars.

Winding Through Little Wildhorse Canyon

The greatest things about the Swell is that over the last million years or so numerous flash floods have eroded the weaker layers and carved out a ton of slot canyons and crazy looking rock formations.  The bummer part of the swell is that it is “managed” by the Bureau of Land Management meaning that the area has no wilderness protection so it is being torn up by ATVs and oil diggers.  The area was proposed to receive National Monument status but GW Bush never acted on the proposal.

Environmentalism aside, there is something about all that wide open space and bizarre-o rock formations that just makes you want to dance.

We spent the morning dancing from rock to rock and then met up with some friends from Salt Lake and explored Little Wild Horse Canyon, a popular beginner slot canyon just a few miles from the entrance to Goblin Valley State Park, while trying to conserve our energy for our go at the Goblin Valley Trail Race the next morning.  I tend to travel to beautiful places for trail races and utterly tire myself out by race morning.

Posing in the Narrow Slots of Little Wildhorse Canyon

A barely above freezing desert morning inspired me to run faster than I have ever run before simply to warm myself up.  I managed to maintain that pace until I puked up candy corn a mile before the finish.  The Halloween themed race had fully stocked bowls of candy corn at all their aid stations and I regretfully grabbed a handful at the last station.  I am not really one for setting race day goals, but I really want to finish a race smiling and I thought this might be the one…

Happy to Have Finished the Goblin Valley Race

Running Through the Spooky Formations in Goblin Valley

Dancing in the Desert

]]> http://dirtbagwriter.com/2009/10/running-and-dancing-with-goblins/feed/ 3 http://dirtbagwriter.com/2009/10/that%e2%80%99s-not-how-you-camp-%e2%80%93-a-night-at-the-big-bend-overflow/ http://dirtbagwriter.com/2009/10/that%e2%80%99s-not-how-you-camp-%e2%80%93-a-night-at-the-big-bend-overflow/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:47:28 +0000 Writer http://dirtbagwriter.com/?p=469

I woke up this morning in Rubes thrilled to be in my one of my favorite camp spots in all of Utah – Big Bend Recreation Area outside of Moab.  The road to Big Bend follows the Colorado River and winds around so many times it completely messes up any sense of direction I have.  The sun always rises in the opposite direction I expect and I still can’t seem to wrap my mind around it.

I couldn’t believe I slept through the night and until 8:30 (all these life changes have given me a bit of insomnia) – but I always sleep well in Ruby.  I don’t know what it is?  Actually I do.  It is something like going home.

This morning as I sit propped up in the back of Rubes journaling while taking in the bright red buttes surrounding me on all sides, a gang of teens from the campground across the street walks by my camp.  “That’s not how you camp,” one of the kids declared very matter of factly as he passed by my car.  I sit up abruptly and almost say out loud, “What – you can’t be talking about me?”  The thing is I don’t know if they are talking about my setup or the luxury home on wheels next to me.

I got into Moab late last night and found my favorite campground full.  With all this talk of economy-shmaconomy, I was astonished to find my fave camp spot filled with gigantic homes on wheels on a Wednesday in the middle of October.  I went across the street to the “overflow” camping lot which can typically fit about 8-10 cars and tried to squeeze into the little bitty spot left by two trucks.  One truck has the largest camper I had ever seen and the other had a trailer with 3 four-wheelers and a golf cart looking thing.

“We don’t fit no where,” my neighbors for the evening said trying to strike up conversation with me.  They had been looking for a campsite for the better part of the evening and instead of thinking there was something wrong with their load they were complaining about the size of the campsites.  It was at the exact moment that I was “greeted” by the camp host and told that I had to pay 5 bucks to park there for the night – ironically the same amount as the 2 trucks, trailer, and house next to me.

I try so, so hard not too judge, but when you spend the night next to a set-up like that – I can’t help it.  And the funny thing is, I really don’t know who that kid was talking about.  It could really be either one of us.  It all depends on his experience and level of camping comfort.  And as much as I might be judging the guys next door they may very well be sitting in their cozy camper laughing about the hippy chick sleeping in her car next door and making jokes about how I will probably be out hugging cactus on the trail tomorrow.