I’m continuing our series into Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. We’re looking for places to bivouac, set up camps near destinations and then get earlier starts on hikes.
We couldn’t leave our last camp soon enough because of gnats and the afternoon heat. The harsh part of Summer isn’t far off. The plan is to situate in higher elevations and the better weather, climbing to suit our lack of suits. We’ll need a place to stay to get an early start near a trailhead, which leads to a ruin that we intend to explore.
A camping spot is found near a very fun old wooden bridge.
The solid old conveyance is filled with character, there are trees for shade and a dry creeks ambiance, maybe cool air will flow down the wash as evening passes.
The spot should suit our needs, but now we need another spot in proximity to Bridges National Park, our hike for the morning. Fish and Owl sounds like a good spot. There is a Ranger Station nearby. Our information is sparse at this point and they will help.
Enriching my being and senses is, to me, like sitting on a bench watching a glorious wondrous sunset. I think that I have a right to the gift. But there is a persistent social imposition that is like having a blind man come by, swish his cane and tell me that that sunset doesn’t exist, or that it is unimportant, or irrelevant. To be denied the wonderment of this body going about its day, exposed to all the sensation that a day can give is cheating me. The imposition of not living naked diminishes my experience of my precious day on Earth.
We have a right to our natural senses. To stand outside and breathe fresh air and its scents. To sense with the entire body is elemental. To walk freely nude, is like a breath of fresh air and I would say that they are both simply a human Right.
This is a short post, something that I wrote a while back about true justice. There simply isn’t enough time these couple of weeks to sit down and finish the complex continuation, or the finale of either of the two story directions that we are flowing toward.
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
We’re here in Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. We have backtracked to Monarch, where we think the Monarch Canyon trail is, after getting misdirected and lost.
An old peaceful looking, Santa appearance of a guy is walking down the two track road with a tall Gandalf-like walking stick. Perhaps Santa is on vacation. He smiles and affirms that we are in the correct spot.
At the trailhead, the off duty wizard has a fun little trailer with a generator humming.
We stop for lunch. While we munch, the New Mexican couple show up. We’re glad that they are not still wandering lost. They comment on the two oddly placed pieces of wood that showed us the way out. They too are grateful. (See the previous post: “LOST Looking for Monarch”)
We slip down the steep sandy slope which walls the riparian area where called the Comb Wash flows.
We let them go ahead, so we can follow at a distance nude. We will take our time and make more distance from them, as we go along and better savor the trail.
We are looking for one of “the Combs” canyons in Southeastern Utah. This one leads up into the grand Monarch Ruins.
We are not sure today. We have notes and a rough drawn map with some mileage written on it. I have done the math to reverse that mileage, as we came from the other direction. The Buttler Wash Road is just a graded dirt route, not even a good place to take a motorhome, or low sedan. There are several side unmarked two track jeep trails branching off of it. They generally head toward the Comb Ridge, where a significant landmark, or at least a canyon can be seen in the distance. Today, we’re not so sure, but we’ll try the most likely candidate, by my reckoning.
When we arrive at the end of this dirt road, there is no apparent trailhead, but as we are eating a lunch snack, a couple with New Mexico plates pulls up in another slot in the overgrown desert bushes. We slip on some coverings and casually stroll over to ask them if their information shows this as the way to Monarch. They give the affirmative. We are encouraged, but in the back of my mind, I can’t see that they have any resources better than ours. They are going off of an internet website on a cell phone. None the less, we decide to tag along, safe in numbers.
They think that a trail down a steep slippery sandy slope is the route. I’ve seen these slots in the sand made by cattle and have doubts, yet we will allow ourselves to defer to them. They seem to know where they are.
I get more doubts at the bottom of this 20 ft. drop-off. The trail is like a tunnel through the thickets.
When I start to have to bend over, it gets suspiciously like a cattle trail, just at about a cows back’s height. Still, this is better than any route that we have found, so far.
After the day’s wandering, we ponder about the mysteriously weird behavior of those two intrusive guys. They had parked down the road at the base of the turnoff to our camp, but we aren’t sure what drew them to park there. Perhaps they left clues.
The day still feels young, even though it is winding down. We can see that the sun is nearer to setting, as we look through the tree’s canopy. We decide to take a stroll in this idyllic weather. It will be a short walk before eating. We won’t need anything, just shoes to glide over the loose sticks and stones…and a camera.
The two track road rambles through the taller trees. It gently waves up and down to the dictates of the contours of the little ravines that head toward the creek bottom at the center of the canyon.
It is not long before we are at the intersection, and then soon there is a turn off heading downhill, or downstream toward a wood stack rail fence. It looks rustic and authentic. Long pieces of mesquite have been stacked in between two posts of similar material. It has been a corral. It is still together. The tire tracks of the two guy’s SUV lie in a patch of dust.
We begin to explore, to see if the ranching still functions. It is capable, but not being used today. We mosey across the tall grass fields to see what is there. From here, we can see in the distance from the base of this pair of canyons confluence. For miles, the easy slope of the bajada fans out before us.
We are up a favorite canyon in the Huachuca Mountains. We just explored an old homestead in ruins, speculating about life here a long time ago. Now, we’ll learn a little more about those days.
Just a bit further, there is a water source in the creek bed.
We’re heading down to the Huachuca Mountains again. This time not up high on the spine, but nestled down below in the foothills of scrub oak forests. We’re looking for a short retreat away from it all in a remote canyon.
Near the turnoff, the Border Patrol has a couple of fellows in custody as we drive by. This has always been a smuggling corridor. Lots of propaganda has been created in recent years about bands of thieving murdering alien people along the border. Contrary to the media ingrained fear, smugglers are busy with their own business, wishing to be in stealth and those whom they guide are focused on a better life and getting out of the border region as soon as possible. They avoid everybody. I’d suppose that our desire for minding our own naked business with stealth corresponds in some ways. A better life is many things to many people.
The old two track road into the hills is looking very ragged.
It has been a while and I don’t feel familiar with it. I decide to turn around and try a quiet spot that I know. It will be a longer walk, but seems just right today.
Wow! This has been the longest time without a post ever.
We’re all right, just in a busy energy consuming time. Closing the BnB and accommodating a new renter instead. We put a stucco finish on the front porch and the sauna.
Stucco Party
We have been in the garden, and also doing a bunch of rearranging. You know, new rugs and more new coming in and old stuff out.
The next couple of posts have been in the works, but they are linked and must be written and sorted out at the same time, which requires a couple of solid free days to sit down, write, choose pics, etc. without distractions. It’s coming, it’s a priority, it’s partially done.
Asking the garden, “What’s for breakfast?”
Jbee and DF
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
I once had a conversation with an ex-forest Service member that I was dating. She told me how back in the day, when working in groups in the wilderness for days at a time, she and her cohorts, had had a skinnydip. They had become less formal, had developed trust. She related how she and others had ended up walking for miles and days, happily and practically, attired nude. No problem was seen, by this.
I have also had conversations with passing forest workers, when myself and companion were nude. It happens. It is natural. Many apparently innately understand nature and naturism’s bonds.
They go hand in hand. It’s natural. Edward Abbey relates. Here is an excerpt form his book, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness: A Celebration of the Beauty of Living in a Harsh and Hostile Land.
He has a day off from the Forest Service and has climbed from the Utah desert into the high snowcaps:
“The wind stops, completely, as I finish my lunch. I strip and lie back in the sun, high on Tukuhnkivats, with nothing between me and the universe but my thoughts. Deliberately I compose my mind, quieting the febrile buzzing of the cells and circuits, and strive to open my consciousness directly, nakedly to the cosmos. Under the influence of cosmic rays I try for cosmic intuitions—and end up earthbound as always, with a vision not of the universal but of a small and mortal particular, unique and disparate. . . her smile, her eyes in firelight, her touch.
Well, let it be. You’ll find no deep thinkers at 13,000 ft. anyway. The wind comes up again, I get to my feet and dance along the cornice of a snowbank that hangs above the void. Down there in the forest, somewhere, my camp, my old truck, my fireplace—home. I look for a quick and easy way to return,
The climb up from timberline had taken about two hours. Looking down at the graceful curve of the thousand-foot snowfield it seems that the descent should not require more than five minutes. I put on my clothes, shoulder the rucksack and work down over the rock to the couloir and the upper end of the slide.”
We naked people are not alone. Everyone is a naturist, they just don’t all know it…yet.
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
The Free Range Naturist 