Monday June 16th
Utah 2025 #7
We’ve decided to just hang out, taking it easy today. We can get things in order, have a nice meal. It has been a lot of travel for several days. We’ve found a good place to just enjoy for a time. When it seems right, we have walks to look forward to, long and short.
I set up a shade tarp in the trees with some rope, while DF reorganizes /handles the grey box known as “the Kitchen.” We spend the bulk of the day just reading. I’m solving the world’s issues with “Poverty By America.” There is a book called “Miss O’dell” that we have been reading to each other each night for entertainment. It was written by a Tucson friend of ours who fell into an incredible life working with Rock Royalty. Her anecdotes of a life in the inner circle of the Beatles and others in a rock-&-roll book has been fun, yet sometimes cutting too close to home. I haven’t always been this version of myself. Memories of a young man’s lifestyle can be unsettling.
I begin to notice how these two works are a contrast from the nature that we are immersed in. The books are incongruent with our purposes here in many ways. They are a part of another world. They distract from what we are out to accomplish out here naked in a wilderness. I put one on hold and spend the afternoon busting through the other read, to make way for spiritual practices and the reality immediately in front of me, during the rest of the trip.
DF takes a break to draw aspen trees in her book with pencil.
This is her second attempt with this subject, after a year has passed. One of her retirement hobbies is to explore art and its craft. This is a good meditation during a lazy afternoon.
At some point, consumed in a world far away from here, I notice the sun appears to be setting. The forest is illuminated with that orange light, which brings out red hues in things when the shadows are getting long.
I begin to take a few pictures walking out to the entry toward the main road. This is now the driveway to our retreat and also where the latrine is located.
Something seems off. The bare earth is glowing in a strange light. Down at the graded main road the surface looks paved.
The shadow of a tall red pine has a grey color.
This is all very odd. Away from the canopy, I look up at the sun. I find that it is not setting at all. It is still looming high in the sky, muffled by a cloud, a cloud of smoke!
We had seen this orange glow in the distance a few days before, but this is darkened out, clouded more so. The strange light is more akin to a solar eclipse.
The color of light, strikes me as eerie, like that light that follows a tornado cloud. It creates a feeling in me.
Like the rest of the proximity, we survey each other’s bodies and find our skin is glowing golden.
It is as if the fire itself has cast its orange shadow throughout the forest.
There is a slight taint of smoke perceptible. This is not a good time to hike or to breathe hard. We’ll keep to a short walk around camp. Before long, around camp, it is smoky like an old barroom. There’s much more smoke than last night.
This entire region is beautiful. I can’t stop thinking about how a huge area across the way is a raging inferno, being destroyed.
There is enough destruction to cover hundreds of square miles with smoke for days on end. Shiva is busy.
As a ground squirrel runs before me, I see its stiff tail sticking up through the tall grass. My eyes burn, our nostrils drip. FIRE! I sneeze.
By the time of the arrival for the actual sunset, the winds have shifted. The ominous trail of smoke is again drifting across the view in the south.
In this twilight, we decide to hike straight up the mountain for exercise. We climb on a steep slightly slippery slope, until we find a switchback. It’s a sort of deer trail. I turn around and find myself a bit stunned by the vista. I can see across the colors and jagged edges of the Canyonlands, clear back to Arizona. We can look down upon the distant trail and its peninsula that we drove. Further are all of the memories and the magnificent grandeur of this place. As we take it all in, arm in arm, DF looks out in a peaceful gaze, “I could stand here for hours.” The view from the top of that mountain is mesmerizing. This is not Rock & Roll
We have begun to consider heading further north, to hopefully escape the possibility of more smoke. Sitting in the mountains, unless there is a panoramic view, we can’t always know if the smoke is from the distance, or could be from a local source. There is that uncomfortable insecurity, especially at night.
There is however, a wonderful hike down the hill and across the road… tomorrow.
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