Bryce Canyon

I spent the past few days in a beautiful place- hiking the under the rim trail of Bryce Canyon National Park. We were practically alone on a spectacular trail, the kind of being in a place that makes me wish I had more talent to describe the power of the experience. All of the authors who have inspired me recently, as a writer and as a being, have an incredible sense of place. Edward Abbey, Wendell Barry, Barbara Kingsolver, Tim O'Brien,Terry Tempest Williams, John McPhee, Micheal Pollan, Paul Theroux, and the woman who just wrote The White Mary, which was excellent, to name a short list, all bring the settings of their stories to life. And I am so jealous.

Sometimes I feel like I'll never be able to compete. I'll never be Abbey's lone wolf in the wilderness, or have Barry's emotional connection to the land he has lived and worked his entire life. They have already found the poetry in red rock desert, the intrigue of basin and range fault lines, the magic of the sprouting spring garden, and the adventure of being alone in an unfamiliar land.

I feel the power of the places in my life, from the mundane, staring at the stars through my windshield as I spend yet another night sleeping in the honda, the snowpeak of Mt. Wheeler just illuminated by moonlight, to the extreme, reaching the crest of the ridgeline, 33 miles later, to finally see Bryce Canyon opening out in front of us:The problem is that in all of the places that I find myself, I end up wishing that I had more talent, a greater ability to find truth in the telling, to bring the places I live alive to people who will never wander in the million-dollar wildflower blooms on the Hiko-Stewart fire in Lincoln County Nevada (an essay on this to come, I promise) or climb over the Mormon mountain range carrying several days worth of water to follow fires in the wilderness.

I'm addicted to maps, the names of the mountains and canyons and trails, that all of this nothing out here was actually somewhere to someone, at least long enough to name it. I think that the best I can do, until I hopefully grow up into more talent, is to experience each place that I find myself, as fully as a can. Sometimes, I just take a step back and think, "is this really my life, in this place? this is ridiculous, if only my friends could see me now;" slicing up t-shirts sleeves at 8,000 ft, 15 miles from a trailhead, to make emergency tampons, or lying on my belly, my hair tangled in a spikey-endangered shrub, digging with my bare hands like a dog to claim a piece of it's root's for cloning. These places feel more real, the landscapes that really make up my life.
And of course sharing them sometimes with the people who make up my life as well- Joanna and I on the trail above- once the snow stopped and the sun came out. What a great hike.