Solitude

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“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”

–May Sarton

In mid-April when the weather turned expectedly warm, Steve and I stepped out for our first backpack of the year on the 16-mile Boulder Mail Trail, a route that traverses up and down, in and out of canyons carved by creeks that drain the Aquarius Plateau to the Escalante River. The trail was once used to deliver mail by mule to the small town of Boulder, Utah, hence the name. Being modern Americans, we started out by dropping a car at the trail’s end less than ten minutes from the house. There’s a certain silliness to that. One sets out for no reason but the pure joy of walking across the desert and instead of simply continuing the walk home—maybe another four miles—we leave a car where the trail widens into a road. I could try to justify the action in all sorts of ways (everybody does it!), but the truth is that walking home would demand nothing more than a shift in thinking about where the hike ends. Additionally, the possibility of reaching wilderness from my front door without the aid of an automobile—something few Americans can do—excites the hell out of me. Next time.

Sand Creek

From there we drove a second car to the trailhead in Boulder, Utah, about 30 minutes from the house, and wandered through juniper, pinion, sage, and cactus under a canopy of non-threatening clouds before dropping into the first slickrock canyon to camp for the night at Sand Creek, a peaceful, inviting cut of water through white sand and stone. After setting up camp under a juniper overlooking the creek, we walked upstream to exhaust the afternoon. After wandering an hour or so, we splayed our bodies on a rock and discarded shoes and socks. We listened to Sand Creek gurgle, watched the sun and clouds compete for space in the sky, and beyond that did absolutely nothing.  And I realized sitting there, my feet dug deep into the cool sand, that I seldom do absolutely nothing, that I seldom allow myself to be silent and still for extended periods of time without the aid of some distraction, usually a book. And I further realized that the practice of such stillness is soothing—and maybe even necessary—to the wellbeing of a human soul.

The next day, we climbed out of that drainage in brilliant sunshine and hiked about five miles across desert and slickrock before I was stopped dead in my tracks by the sight of Death Hollow, our destination for the second night. Two things about it yanked me to a stop. The first was the stupendous beauty of the place, the sight of which brought me then, and the memory of which brings me now, to a point of speechlessness. There are only so many times you can repeat the phrase, “oh my God” before you start to sound like the triple-rainbow guy on You-Tube. After a few exclamations, I clammed up, dropped my pack, and crouched down on the rock for a moment to catch my breath. Once I recovered from the visual magnificence in front of me, the second progress-halting aspect of Death Hollow came into focus, which was a beckoning rock cairn that teetered on the edge of a 650-ft drop into the dark gorge below. With that came the lingering story of how Death Hollow earned its name when a mule slipped off that particular trail and plunged to its death.

Now would be the time to admit that I have a malady known as Benign Positional Vertigo (BPV), which is episodic and, as the name implies, positional, meaning it comes on by tipping the head in a certain way, in my case upward and to the right. When it hits, I tend to bump against walls and zigzag like Wahoo, the town drunk who lived up the street from me as a child. As the name also implies, it is benign, more accurately described as simply annoying, unless, of course, one intends to camp creekside in Death Hollow, in which case it takes on a new severity. I pushed the thought of it out of my mind, assuming that I would have no reason to be scanning anything above me and to my right.

When we reached the teetering rock cairn, which gave us a view of only the single next rock cairn, which would be the case most of the way down—meaning you have to trust that the next one will appear when you need it—Steve stopped me and said, “every step counts, stay focused.” I appreciated his reminder, but I had pretty much reached that conclusion on my own. If you’ve ever been mentally frozen in a place with that kind of exposure—and I have—you know there’s little psychological wiggle room. It’s one of those times where deep contemplation is not only useless but dangerous. Intention and flow are everything. I set my intent and my mantra—my way of staying focused—and stepped out.

From the depths of Death Hollow

Once we set up camp, rinsed off in a deep, clear pool, found a place to sit in a lingering splice of sunshine, and poured ourselves a titanium cup of wine (we pack light but we don’t give up the essentials), I was struck again by the splendor of the place. Death Hollow runs faster and deeper and with more vigor than Sand Creek. In other words, it cuts a more striking path—its rock walls taller, its vegetation more flush. The profound beauty of Death Hollow, however, stems from the fact that it remains inaccessible enough and inhospitable enough—its favored flora is Poison Ivy—that we found ourselves in the increasingly rare condition of utter solitude.

Throughout my life I’ve been pulled toward solitude, and I have found the maintenance of such within a marriage, within a community, and within friendships a difficult thing to balance. Generally speaking, our modern society shuns solitude and the people who seek it. In her 1987 book, Hide and Seek, written from a small trailer perched in the desert on a bank of the Colorado River, Jessamyn West writes, “It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone.” I feel the truth of West’s words. At times I find the recoil of repudiation so great that I’m encouraged to tell an outright lie—I’d love to but I’m committed elsewhere!—rather than admit my desire for solitude, as if such a desire represents a weakness in character. From what I have witnessed, it is more difficult for women—the traditional caretakers of others—to both demand and grant solitude. In my experience, we are slower than men to demand solitude and possibly quicker to feel repudiated if someone demands it from us.

Only in hindsight—once we’ve measured the “production” of solitude—have we been willing to accept it from the likes of John Muir, Carl Jung, and Thomas Merton to name a few who insisted on periods of extended solitude. (I’m not tossing Thoreau into the mix since his solitude was somewhat exaggerated. Not only did he walk to town from his cabin almost daily, but he had a near continuous stream of visitors to Walden Pond.) And still, even after we’ve seen what can come from solitude, we hold it at arms length. We fret when our children spend too much time alone. We can barely walk down a tree-lined street alone. We want to share the moment with another, as if it isn’t quite real unless another confirms it. Upon telling friends that Steve works ten days a month in Salt Lake City while I stay in Escalante, some have offered up alternatives for my “aloneness.” I dare not tell them that I look forward to that time of solitude because it seems impolite to do so, and, unless I’m talking to another solitary who will understand immediately, it requires too much explanation.

We humans have gone to extreme means to distract ourselves from solitude and avoid it altogether—television, internet, email, facebook, texting, cell phones. Cell phones remain, to me, one of our most perplexing inventions. I concede the convenience factor (especially now that phone booths have all but disappeared), but to be regularly available to others—even those I love—is one of the most unpleasant ideas I can think of. I don’t believe my life is diminished from not owning a cell phone, in fact, the opposite. Based on the number of people I pass on city streets who are seeing nothing more than a small screen in front of them, I daresay my view is more expansive than most.

According to the omnipresent research, human beings are social animals, relationship-forming creatures. Some research goes so far as to say that our immune systems are deeply affected by the relationships we form—that bad relationships can sicken us and good ones can heal us—and further that relationships determine how we feel about ourselves and how we view the world. I don’t doubt this research at all. Certainly humans innately seek companionable mates like many other animals, and certainly good, nurturing relationships—whether it be with lovers or friends—fulfill human needs and enrich our lives in innumerable ways. But I wonder if we’ve internalized the research to such an extreme that we’re caught in a cycle where the research drives our actions, thereby creating more confirming research, which further drives our actions to the point that we’re near incapable of solitude. The benefits of solitude come slowly and require enough patience that we let them develop before we reach for the nearest distraction. Are we now in a place where we are no longer able to process such benefits?

In one of my favorite books, Fifty Days of Solitude, Doris Grumbach profoundly captures the fears and rewards of self-induced isolation. She does this in a mere 114 pages. I believe that to be one of the benefits of solitude—the waste of words falls away as if in a smelting process that leaves only precious stones. Of her decision to give herself fifty days of solitude, Grumbach writes:

In this way, living alone in quiet, with no vocal contributions from others . . . I was apt to hear news of an inner terrain, an endolithic self, resembling the condition of lichens embedded in rock. My intention was to discover what was in there, no matter how deeply hidden . . . if I dug into the pile of protective rock and mortar I had erected around me in seventy-five years, perhaps I would be able to see if something was still living in there. Was I all outside? Was there enough inside that was vital, that would sustain and interest me in my self-enforced solitude?

Perhaps the fear of answering Grumbach’s last question in the negative is what keeps many of us from seeking solitude. As she sinks into her fifty-day solitary routine, Grumbach arrives herself at what the research tells us—that our relationships determine how we view ourselves:

Our points of reference are always our neighbors . . . our close and distant families, all of whom tell us, with their hundreds of tongues, who we are. We are what we were told we were, we believed what we heard from others about our appearance, our behavior, our choices, our opinions . . . Rarely if ever did we think to look within for knowledge of ourselves . . . Would we think we existed without outside confirmation? And how long could we live apart from others before we began to doubt our existence?

Has the creation and popularity of social networking given us an answer to those questions? Or has it merely provided us with an opportunity to avoid them?

As Grumbach begins to understand “the great gift of time alone” she looks back with dismay on opportunities lost, times when she found herself living alone and couldn’t embrace it. “I was lonely because I had no experience with solitude,” she writes. I can relate. I’ve had times in my life when solitude was imposed rather than chosen, and I spent much of that time hand wringing. The irony, or maybe the strange twist of the universal plan, is that as soon as I let myself settle into the great gift of time alone it disappeared in the form of a lover or friend. It seems solitude readies one for relationships. And maybe the opposite is true also.

Steve, not quite alone, on the Boulder Mail Trail

The other day I asked my husband, who is also a solitary, to think about the longest period of time he’s spent in complete solitude—no conversation with another, no human intrusion except books and music. A wistful look came over his face, and I could see that he has missed his extended periods of solitude—for him also, solitude is difficult to balance within a marriage. What would have once been a solitary camp for him in the bottom of Death Hollow is no longer. Solitary week-long backpacks were once his. And, of course, they could be still. He knows I would not consider myself one of the repudiated. But it’s more complex than that, as the delicate balance between solitude and relationships tends to be. Because we are both solitaries, we like each other, and we like spending time together as inconsistent as that might sound. In other words, we never get enough of either option, togetherness or solitude, so the choice of one comes with a sacrifice of the other.

I now find myself in a marriage, in a town, and among friends where solitude is, indeed, acceptable. This is a place—metaphorical and literal—that I’ve searched for my entire life without success. Until now. I have a few theories to explain how this change came about at this stage in my life. One theory is that we’ve reached a critical mass of humanity populating the earth, and the tremendous noise we generate has simply overwhelmed our ability to live within it. Something, some innate survival instinct, is telling us to dash for cover, thereby, making solitude not only acceptable to many but preferable. Maybe that’s just me.

My second theory is that the town I’ve chosen to live in is remote and, therefore, attracts fellow solitaries. I think there’s some truth to this. But again, this rouses the solitary paradox. Never in my life have I felt comfortable around others the way I do here. When I am extended a social invitation here, I am free to say, “nah, I don’t really feel like it,” without explanation and with knowledge that I will likely be invited again, which makes me truly like the people here. That, of course, raises the likelihood that I will not only happily accept social invitations but extend them as well—an act that is foreign to my pre-Escalante life—because I enjoy the company of my fellow Escalantites. A solitary’s quandary.

My third theory is that I have subconsciously, over 55 years of life, inched myself to a place where solitude lingers near and can be accessed without commotion. I’ve placed myself in such a geographic location, and I’ve placed myself in such company. If someone, say a 20-year-old woman in desperate need of solitude, were to ask me how I managed to get here, if she were to ask me to provide her with a template for getting here, I would suggest to her that she take a more direct route than the one that trails behind me. Who was it who said “seek and ye shall find”? Was that Matthew? Wise disciple. I’m pretty sure he was talking about solitude.

 

Caring for the Near and Dear

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In the last week, as in every week before it, a multitude of calls for attention, compassion, caring, money, and/or time devoted to issues, injustices, and actions found their way into my life. Most of them came by email, some by facebook, some by phone, some in person. I counted thirteen not including those that I indirectly summoned by reading the newspaper. Often they are prompted by something I’ve said or written. Issues begat issues. Feminism, environmentalism, poverty, racism, sexism, ageism, violence, healthcare, education, animal cruelty—every possible topic brings with it a flood of legitimate concerns, a long list of related injustices, and usually numerous unconscionable acts committed by those with power.

To put it bluntly, I’m overwhelmed by the competition for caring.

The problem is twofold. One, the opportunities for moral outrage are plentiful, multifaceted, and urgent—many worthy of compassion, energy, and time. Two, I’m vulnerable to gravitational pulls and better at soaking up messes than Bounty paper towels. As my father used to say when I’d crumble under his directed anger, “You’re too damn sensitive!”

About eight years ago, sitting alone in a Tucson apartment overlooking Time Market on University Avenue, I had either an epiphany or a breakdown. Maybe both. It was a time of loss—the end of a marriage, the loss of a home, the departure of friends, a change of jobs—and for the prior few months I had spent an enormous amount of time wallowing in fear and self pity. On that particular spring afternoon, I experienced a palpable feeling of things being settled—for better or worse. In that moment, I realized I had to find my way to a life of peace, although, having never before experienced such a thing, I had no idea what it might look like or how I might attain it.

I have a CD of Bikram Choudhury leading a yoga class, and at a certain point of instructing a student on a posture, Bikram says, “What are you waiting for? Somebody going to help you?” Although I didn’t hear this CD until years after that Tucson moment, I somehow heard those words that day.

What I learned in the eight years since is that peace is not attainable. It’s not something one acquires and keeps forever more. It’s a practice—much like yoga. Some days a yoga practice flows smoothly, and one feels the beauty and fullness of the human body in movement. Other days, every posture feels like a battle of will between body and mind. The practice of peace is much the same. But peace is not a monthly, weekly, or daily practice; it’s a moment-to-moment practice. And both practices—peace and yoga—require an act of letting go.

Five months ago, as I began this blog, I came late to the party of facebook. I had avoided it for years in an attempt to restrict exposure to my aforementioned susceptibility to being yanked off course with little enticement. But I had gone too far, pulled the restraints too tightly around myself, and isolated myself. So I joined facebook, the modern way of connecting with the world. Yet, I don’t feel connected. In fact, the opposite. After spending twenty minutes on facebook, I’m frazzled. It’s not the everyday banal posts that trouble me. In fact, there’s something I find almost soothing about the photo of dressed-up deviled eggs with eyes of black olive bits and noses of carrot snips posted by my once-removed sister-in-law. It means someone has found a way to care about this small source of delight in a world of beleaguering madness. What I’m having trouble facing in facebook are the posts that shout, “here’s something you should care about, something you should be outraged by, something you should get involved in, something you should share with others, something you should not remain silent about. Look! Care! Do something! At the very least, show you have a conscience by “liking” the post.”

The irony that I make such posts myself is not lost on me. I find these posts—and emails—useful and informative, even laudable, which is precisely the problem. I do care. But I’m struggling with the practice of peace amid the injustice, violence, outrage, hatred, chaos, manipulation, and absurdity circulating through my world. Is it possible to live with both peace and passion? Is it possible to fill a life with beauty when I’m daily notified that the very places bringing beauty into my life are being destroyed in front of me? Can I continue to carry love inside of me while being assaulted with the death of it around me? In short, is my capacity for caring vast enough to contain the magnitude of the demand?

Part of my care fatigue is caused, I believe, by what I perceive as the lost art of argument. The comments on facebook and elsewhere reflect an atmosphere where we are quick to take a stand, quick to take offense, quick to make assumptions, quick to draw conclusions, quick to employ ad hominem fallacies, and as self-righteous as humans can possibly be. Although we could easily rename the ad hominem fallacy after Rush Limbaugh who has reprehensibly perfected the service of it, I don’t find these unfortunate traits to be the private property of either the right or the left. Many—me included—were outraged by George W. Bush’s insistence upon setting up a false delimma—you’re either with us or against us—but it seems we’ve since adopted such a battle cry on almost every issue. We don’t have discussions; we have stand-offs.

Another part of my care fatigue comes from the fact that I’m slow to arrive at certainty. I like to sit with issues, ponder them, think about them, toy with them, discuss them with people who don’t think the same way I think, and let my thoughts develop and evolve unhurriedly, but that sort of approach can only be done one small issue at a time. Perhaps that’s why it is out of favor—we’re operating in crisis mode. One must adopt a position immediately. I envy those who seem clear and certain about the answers because deep in my heart, on many issues, I believe we have arrived at a place without answers.

This niggling feeling that the answers are not there, that we have extended past the tipping point, I believe, resides at an unconscious level in many of us, the fear of which adds to the vitriol of the discussion and may deter the process of finding creative alternatives. Some are of the position that I have no right to argue or point out a problem unless I can also propose a solution to the problem. It’s the “if you don’t have an alternative solution you have no right to argue against mine” defense. Whenever someone intimates that I should shut up if I can’t propose a solution, my inner skeptic flares. It is this stance that leaves us with overly simplistic answers to complex problems and solutions with unintended consequences. We, of course, have every right to argue against the means without having a solution for the end. Isn’t that what public discourse is supposed to be about, the discussion of ideas and issues before arriving at a conclusion rather than the stomping around insistence of right solutions? At times wrong action is obvious. Right action may not be quite so apparent, but that does not negate one’s right to comment on the wrong action. Fracking, for example, seems to me to be an act that is utterly deplorable and destructive, an act that can in no way be justified, and an act that should be stopped immediately. Yet I have no answers for the nation’s dependence on energy. My gut instinct is that we must—and will when we have to—become less dependent on energy, but there is no simple, clear, easy process and the answers remain fuzzy. So be it. A state of uncertainty is not the worst thing; certainty can be far more dangerous.

We also seem ready to ignore the nuances of any given issue, as if recognition of such might give our opponents an opening. I find myself grossly over-generalized, placed into camps based on a particular point of view I’ve expressed in the past, as if my opinions can then be extrapolated to every related issue. It causes me discomfort. Every issue is unique; every argument is nuanced. In addition to being slow to arrive at certainty, I’m also hesitant, once I’m there, to gather every related topic into the circle and proclaim confidence on all of them.

To approach issues thoughtfully within the life of peace to which I am committed means that I cannot be tugged by gravitational pulls but must instead be narrowly selective. The activists I most admire are those who devote their energy, passion, and sometimes their entire lives to a single cause, recognizing, of course, that every single issue is interconnected with every other. Those focused in their approach—Jane Goodall comes to mind—also find in their work, I believe, joy residing alongside sadness and beauty residing alongside ugliness. When the fist-pounders come calling with related issues, the person singularly focused has guts enough to say, “I care, but my focus is here.” Unless we are invested in thinking “you’re either with me or against me,” that answer is more than acceptable.

The truth is I have to let go of more than I grab onto. I have to spend fewer hours of my life being morally outraged and more hours of my life at peace. I believe this is a worthwhile pursuit. I believe that peace spreads from one person to another, that if more people were committed to the practice of individual peace, we may find a way to approach the enormous problems that we face with less fury, less noise, and less need to convince others of our rightness.

Where peace and passion unite: Calf Creek Falls, Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument

I have decided to grab onto the most near and dear, to expend what energy I have within a close circle because caring in a small, non-technological way makes sense to me. It feels real; it feels manageable. In my mind, small cells of caring dotted across the earth can’t help but bind into connective tissue that then supports the growth of healthy organs. My focus is the community of Escalante, Utah, and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, a place that allows a perfect union of peace and passion.

Staying Home

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A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

–George Moore

I have not traveled much. Over the years this fact has caused me a great deal of shame, but as I settle contentedly into middle age—calculated as if I plan to live beyond one hundred years—the shame of undone deeds sloughs off like snakeskin. It used to be that when those more experienced than I spoke of their travels—a topic that serves the conversation of my demographic in the same way health issues serves those thirty years my senior—I would mumble incoherently, afraid of revealing my nomadic shortcomings. Now, however, having gotten my insecurities down to a near-manageable simmer, I boldly yank the New York Times travel section out of the Sunday paper and stick it under the kindling in the wood stove.

One Sunday, though, before I could get the paper sufficiently scrunched up, a front page article written by Paul Theroux caught my attention with this sentence: “‘Don’t go there,’ the know-it-all, stay-at-home finger wagger says of many a distant place.  I have heard it my whole traveling life, and in almost every case it was bad advice.”  Really? The stay-at-homers are wagging fingers? Was he pointing at me? At this age, I try not to wag my finger at anyone for fear of losing it, but Theroux’s accusation left me literally cold as I abandoned my task of fire building to ponder his essay.

Over lunch one day, an acquaintance informed me that she considered travel an essential part of educating her children, a part she had taken seriously. I smiled and enthusiastically nodded my approval while she spoke of faraway places that had transformed her children from ordinary, ignorant Americans into fabulous, worldly-wise adults. I could find no point upon which to disagree with her, but a twinge of defensiveness edged along my spine as I translated her words: traveling equals wisdom; not traveling equals ignorance. Before and since that moment, my overactive hackles have been raised more than a few times in causal conversation with globe-trotting friends. It is possible no judgments are being thrust upon me beyond those I’m thrusting myself, but I suspect otherwise. “She’s never been anywhere!” friends exclaim when someone exhibits a less than enlightened attitude, clearly explaining the root of the problem as if stepping on a plane in Cincinnati and stepping off in Bombay immediately transforms one from a narrow-minded nitwit into Ghandi. It’s true that I can come up with an endless list of wise and wonderful people who travel broadly. But I can also name quite a few idiots who do.  I’m guessing the ratio in the non-traveling population might be about the same. Admittedly, I could be wrong.

But who, exactly, is the doing the finger wagging: Theroux’s know-it-all stay-at-homer or my crowing traveler? Likely both. But it matters not. As my astute husband once said to me, the fewer topics we insist on turning into moral issues, the better. Whether to travel or stay home can be, I suspect, easily removed from the category of “moral issue” if we choose to do so. And I do.

My parents never had the means to travel any farther than the Grand Canyon—reached by car in the middle of July with a kid hanging out every window to ward off heat prostration—so my siblings and I did not emerge from the nest in a cosmopolitan sort of way. I didn’t get a passport until I was in my 30s, and it expired before it was used. I didn’t use a passport until I was in my 50s because the only two countries I’d ever visited prior to that—Canada and Mexico—didn’t require one. I cling to my simple explanation—I can’t afford travel—which is not quite true. The truth is that I can’t afford to travel the way I would like to and I don’t like to travel the way I can afford to.

I like to travel deeply rather than broadly. It matters not to me that I’m able to produce a long list (or better yet, photos!) of the places I’ve been and the various things I’ve seen. A recent ten-day trip to Rome left me feeling like a pre-verbal child sitting in a corner fascinated with her rattle when the family dog snatches it away and runs out the door: frustrated and wanting to scream, “I wasn’t finished with that!”

Don’t get me wrong. Rome was filled with gasping moments of art, food, city roaming, more art, and more food. But that’s the problem—mere moments of being there juxtaposed with horrendous hours of getting there. In another article in the NYTs travel section (it can be tough to get that section wrestled into the stove) a travel writer described today’s first class air travel as only slightly less horrible than coach, a fact I cannot attest to, but I can attest to the dreadful experience of coach.

I’ll readily admit that one of my numerous neuroses is being trapped in an enclosed vessel with many of my species while we draw in and expel one another’s breathing air. The only thing worse is to put that vessel afloat on an ocean where one cannot escape for days; hence, my aversion to cruise ships. It’s not the germs that bother me—I’ll eat a piece of food off a dirty floor worry-free if I can get to it before the dog does—it’s the people. And it’s not that I don’t like people, but I like them to be appropriately spaced like, say, tomato plants in the garden. Two summers ago I learned that if tomato plants—or people—are too close, they become tangled in one another’s vines and drag one another into the dirt, thereby creating the perfect milieu for fleshy tissue, mold, and ant-infestation. This process can happen quickly and catch a person sleeping. A transatlantic flight is more than ample time.

I take comfort in the fact that my anti-travel neurosis dims in comparison to that of this blog’s inspiration, E.B. White, who was so averse to being in close proximity to an abundance of fellow humans, he missed his own wife’s funeral with full acceptance and understanding from his family and friends. I need family and friends like his.

So I ask myself, where might I go, what final destination (to give it a travelesque sort of tone) might provide me with the sophisticated maturity of one well traveled without the degradation inflicted on me at both ends of the episode? After thinking about that for a while, I revised the lofty goal of sophisticated maturity—likely out of my reach—to one of simple joy, and before long came up with the answer. It’s a location to which millions of people from all over the world annually arrive after subjecting themselves to hours of great discomfort and risk: Southern Utah.

In her recent book, My Reach: A Hudson River Memoir, Susan Fox Rogers writes, “I was handed the Hudson River when I moved to Tivoli [New York]. I did not choose the river, but I saw that I was lucky to have the Hudson to play on, to explore, to turn to for comfort.” She then proceeds to get to know the Hudson River. I mean really get to know it. She sits on its banks. She swims in its waters. Over the course of three years, she paddles north and south in her kayak exploring its islands, its industry, its history, its flora and fauna. She makes the treacherous paddle around Manhattan Island. She knows the birds that nest on the river’s islands; she knows the fish that swim in its depths. She knows the river’s tides, and she knows the river’s traffic. She knows where the rocks hide at low tide waiting to scrape the bottom of her kayak as she comes and goes from landings, and she knows where the deep shipping lanes are. She knows the river on windy days, sunny days, and cold days. She knows the river with ice floes, spatterdock, moonlight and dense fog. She insists on paddling at night to know her river “by feel, by scent.” She explores the crumbling icehouses of a bygone era along its banks, as well as the mansions and their various occupants through the years. She knows the PCB levels in the water. She’s come close to being crushed by a barge, and she’s seen a bloated body pulled from the river; she knows its dangers. And she knows the people who know the river better than she does.

I want to know my place—the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument—the way Rogers knows the Hudson River. Unlike Rogers, Steve and I did choose our place. We chose it because this was often our “final destination” when we had three days, one week, two weeks, a month—whatever time we could manage—to get away. We came here. Over and over, among the many travel choices we could have made, we returned to this place. Every time we came, we sank a little deeper into the desert. That’s when I realized I don’t want to travel broadly; I want to travel deeply.

Still, I’ve barely scratched the surface of the place I live. Rogers has inspired me to do otherwise as she did many years ago when she tapped me on the shoulder at the University of Arizona where we were both attending grad school and suggested we hike. From that point forward, I followed her up trails, over mountains, into the desert and into the woods. Still, I never knew Tucson or the surrounding desert and mountains the way she did. I suspect she’s known everyplace she’s ever lived in a way that few residents do.

I’ve been in Escalante three years now. It’s time to get to know my place. It calls me so strongly I yearn for it as one yearns for a lost love. It’s time to travel deeply into the deserts and canyons and allow them access into the depths of me. On the Hudson River, Rogers found solace for recent loss, gained compassion for the choices she’s made, and came away with an understanding of what anchored her to this world: love. Gifts bestowed upon her by the river, by traveling deeply into her place.

I may or may not be given gifts of equal value by traveling deeply into my place. I suspect the gifts depend more upon the person than the place. As Rogers has written, “By now I knew, of course, that if I loved the river, the river was indifferent to me.”  And therein lies the wonder of a place—it is indifferent to our pain, our fear, our prerequisites. And it is particularly indifferent to our love for it, which only makes us love it more. What a place offers depends, of course, upon what a person needs.

The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument is vast. Getting to know it could easily take the rest of my life. I have set a travel goal for myself of simple joy. I am fairly sure my travel itinerary will exceed expectations.

On Walking

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On Walking

It may not be natural for man to walk on two legs, but it was a noble invention.

–Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Twelve years ago, Rebecca Solnit wrote a book entitled Wanderlust: The History of Walking. Before reading a page of it, I was filled with admiration and petty jealousy. The logic, if you will, went something like this: I walk and I’m a writer; I should have written that book. After reading the book, the admiration grew and the petty jealousy, well, it grew also. But the idea that I should have written that book faded quickly.

In Solnit’s hands, Wanderlust is a graceful, slow, meandering read, as a book about walking should be. Buy it, read it, walk with it. I suggest acquiring this particular book in its material form, made of real paper from real trees rooted deeply into the earth because there’s something about walking—and reading about walking—that demands physical intercourse with the earth.  “Walking . . .” writes Solnit, “is how the body measures itself against the earth.”

* * *

I’m not sure what turned me into a lustful wanderer. Initially it had more to do with walking away than walking toward, but that has shifted over the years. My childhood town allowed exploration on foot—sidewalks along tree-lined streets spilled into open fields, running ditches, and the Oquirrh Mountains—all accessible from my front door without wheels. No cars idled outside my elementary school at day’s end to gather children, and I thank the attitude of the time and place for that. Being a latchkey kid, which I understand is now considered problematic, was then an immense gift. It meant that a 20-minute walk from school to home could be turned into a 90-minute adventure.

 On my way home from school I learned about rocks and bugs and reptiles and trees and weeds. I learned that I like walking with a single friend, but I dislike groups. I learned that gossip is not only fun but essential for close friendships. I learned that no matter where I lived in town, I was destined to be going in the opposite direction of my friends. I learned that I like solitude.

My imagination flourished on those walks but not so much so that I ever became the heroine of my own stories—always the rescued sufferer. I practiced swearing and lying and became quite good at both. I practiced throwing—rocks, snowballs, dirt clods—but never became good at it. I learned to love mud and the crispy edges of ice. I learned that I’m a toucher, that I cannot walk past a tree, a fence, a plant, a rock wall, a parked car, a building—anything within reach—without touching it, and that’s why all my gloves have holes in the fingertips. I’m also a scooper. I scoop up whatever surface I’m walking over—especially sand and mud—to carry it in my palm.

I learned that the outside world is beautiful, quiet, and peaceful, and that the inside world is considerably less so. I learned that in most instances the outside world is the safer of the two.

A few years back, I went to a place called Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island to write for six weeks. Upon arrival, I put my belongings in my cottage and, before unpacking, set off on foot for several hours, walking trails and roadways in a random, jagged-edged circumference around Hedgebrook. At dinner that evening, the chef said, “I saw you leave shortly after you got here.” I nodded. “You had to get your bearings before you could settle into the place,” she said, nodding her understanding and approval. A fellow wanderer.

Ultimately, that’s what walking is for me—a way to get my bearings, a way to define the edges of my life. Now, too, in my world of email, internet, and social media, walking has taken on a sacred aspect. It is the last bastion of privacy—a place where I am not tracked, in fact, barely noticed.

* * *

A few thoughts on walking:

Desert Walks.

A few months ago, I walked naked in the desert. It was never my intention to do so, but a generous run of clean, red sand through slickrock seduced me to pull off hiking boots and thick wool socks. I stepped tenuously at first, then sank my left foot up to the ankle into cold sand while my right foot found the smooth stone. I was barely aware of the articles of clothing that followed the boots and socks because that’s what nature does—calls forth our own human nature in its purest form. To the best of my knowledge, that sort of fusion with the natural world might be the only way to get to the core of ourselves. And I’m afraid that’s what we risk losing—that essential capacity to tap into our own animal nature—if we cannot find a way to let the wild run wild.

–Excerpt from “Wild Thoughts” in Comeback Wolves

I wrote those words eight years ago for an anthology welcoming the reintroduction of wolves onto western lands. The words describe a late spring day, cool but brilliantly sunny. Steve and I had walked into the slickrock of Strike Valley Overlook at the entrance to upper Muley Twist and found a notch in the rocks out of the breeze. I pulled off boots and socks and was immediately rewarded by the heat-storing rocks, sending warmth up my body through the bottom of my feet. Enticed to place as much skin as possible against the warm rocks, every article of clothing was soon cast aside. Steve did the same. Then he held out his hand and said, “Walk with me.”

“Really?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“What if we see someone?”
He shrugged.

Barefoot across slickrock, we left our clothing behind and walked for at least an hour. Within minutes, what felt initially uncomfortable became one of the most natural acts of my life. Steve knew this. He had been walking naked across slickrock for more than 30 years when I met him, an act driven not by prurience but by nature—human nature. His connection to the natural world had never been severed; the organic feral part of him retained and nurtured. With those three words, walk with me, he restored mine.

* * *

Long Walks. Once while wandering in the desert with Steve, I boasted that I had never reached my walking capacity, that although I might grow weary, my legs would keep moving across the landscape regardless of my mental or physical state. I believe he took that as a challenge.

The first test of my boast came on the last day of a 50-mile walk through Paria Canyon in the Arizona strip on my 49th birthday. A lovely walk it was. The first day through the deep, narrow slot called Buckskin Gulch was more 14-mile obstacle course than walk. It required slogging through ice-cold, waste-high pools with packs held overhead and bellying under log jams dragging packs behind on a rope.

Buckskin Gulch

We reached the confluence with the Paria River at dusk, bedraggled and happy, searching for a campsite, most of which were already taken. We walked the gauntlet past steady eyes of already-settled campers who watched us with a mixture of curiosity, superiority, and pity (maybe even suspicion—for some reason, the dueling banjos song sprang into my mind at that moment). When I expressed my bewilderment to Steve—there were only three other people who shuttled to the trailhead with us and a minimum number of permits to walk the 50-mile canyon—he explained to me that most of the campers had arrived via 7-mile shortcut to the camping area, and most would be leaving the same way. That’s when I adopted an attitude of pity for those who had arrived efficiently. Let them smugly sip their cocktails while we set up camp on a narrow sandbar in the falling darkness, for we knew what they had missed: fourteen miles of travel between red rock walls that gently brush your body as you pass—one of the most sensual walks a human can take through the earth—seductive, erotic, ravishing.

Efficiency is something that troubled Solnit in her walking journeys, and I share her hesitation. She writes of shortcuts, for example, trodden between switchbacks on a trail that could be traveled for no reason other than pleasure, “as though efficiency was a habit they could not shake.” I often see the same.

There’s a place in the Escalante Canyons—inarguably one of the most stunning places in the world—that in the 1970s could be reached only by one of several slow rambles between red rock walls, down washes and sand dunes, through water—all routes offering a journey of exquisite splendor and requiring at least one night’s stay. In recent years, however, the efficient hikers have created a new route, a shortcut that drops off a rock face directly into the canyon, and today it is probably the most highly traveled route to that particular location, and a person can make it in and out of the canyon in a single day if they keep a quick pace. I’m perplexed by this. A lot of people type the adage, “it’s the journey not the destination” on their Facebook pages—it has become a tired cliché—but I see more evidence of the opposite, as if the requisite Facebook photo op is the sole purpose for going.

There’s something about walking in wilderness that contradicts efficiency, that cleanly removes it from the “desirable traits” list and puts it on the “undesirable habits” list. In his 1968 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, So Human an Animal, Rene Dubos predicted that spending most of our days among “concrete and steel . . . in the midst of noise, dirt, ugliness, and absurdity” threatened our very “humanness . . . that physical welfare, mental sanity, and emotional satisfaction require more than economic affluence [and] the production of things.”  Since 1968, I would argue that the world has become noisier, uglier, and more absurd, and the need to remove ourselves from that, more essential. What do we lose of our humanness through the loss of those 25,000 extra steps? What does living life in the most efficient manner take from us?

For the next five days, we moseyed down Paria Canyon among 20-foot-high hanging gardens, drank from natural fountains shooting forth from cracks in the walls, swam under water falls, and bathed in clear, cold pools. Our bodies attracted the elements as if they had gone through years of deprivation; it felt right to be water-doused, sun-baked, sand-exfoliated, and wind-brushed, so that instead of measuring itself against the earth, the body blended with the earth.

We lingered, we dawdled, we played—so much so that on the last day, the day our permits expired and we had to be out of the canyon, we still had about eleven miles to walk. So began the test of my walking capacity.

My understanding was that we were simply going to walk down the Paria River until it dumped us into the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry, which is technically correct. Eleven miles is, for me, a full day with a heavy pack but not impossible—I had already done a 14-mile day to begin the walk. However, unlike the miles that came before, which had been a leisurely stroll since leaving Buckskin Gulch, the last eleven required many overland detours to navigate substantial drops in elevation. Every couple of miles, the river narrowed, dropped over the edge of a rock cliff, pooled for a moment at the bottom, and went on its merry way.

Standing at the top of those falls never failed to remind me that we are one of the most inadequate and awkward animals walking the earth. Solnit describes the human body as a “column of flesh and bone, always in danger of toppling . . . the upright body’s various sections balanced on top of each other . . . a proud, unsteady tower” whereas “four-legged animals are as steady as a table.”

With the drop in elevation came a rise in temperature to 110 degrees, a notable absence of even a shred of shade, a trail of deep sand that eventually worked its way into socks, leaving skin rubbed raw and leading to a significant slowdown in my walking speed. From the riverbed, we reached the cutoff to Lee’s Ferry Landing, meaning the truck was less than a mile away. The only obstacle in front of me was a short crawl up a 3-foot, sandy riverbank that broke away with each step. My legs refused. I made several attempts—five or six—before dropping to the ground, dumping my backpack, and admitting that I had reached my walking capacity. There are times when even I—a hopeless romantic—can no longer retain the romance of the walk. At that point, I began casting about for the efficient shortcut.

* * *

 City Walks. I miss city walking. That might be an embarrassing thing to admit, living as I do on the edge of 1.9 million acres of desert wilderness carved with red rock slots, creeks and rivers, waterfalls, and foot-massaging sand. But I do.

I miss the strangeness of humans, what they create, what they leave behind. In the wilderness, I don’t want to see human remnant; in fact, I don’t want to see another human. In the city, I want exactly that—to walk among the crowds with complete anonymity.

I’ve been benignly mugged once in my city walks. In New York City, a man walked beside me chatting and smiling, putting to rest the rumors of unfriendly New Yorkers until a woman following us yelled “Get your hand out of that bag!” and the man pulled his hand from the bag I had slung over my shoulder and ran off empty-handed. When I turned to thank her, she scowled at my stupidity and went on her way.

The city I know best, Salt Lake City, is built on a Mormon grid so one can never get lost. That might be my favorite bequest from my Mormon ancestors.  Once one knows the starting point—the Mormon temple grounds—one can navigate to any Salt Lake City address or ascertain coordinates without aid of map or GPS. Visitors often find this address system confusing and frustrating, but given enough time, one is forced to admit its brilliance.

In the older parts of town, the grid allowed for large lots, wide streets, and big square blocks usually split in half with a narrow alley that runs between the backyards of houses facing opposite directions. Walking the back alleys is the outside equivalent of snooping through someone’s medicine cabinet. I have peeked through wooden slats and passed slowly by gates to eavesdrop on conversations conducted under a false sense of confidentiality.

A few years ago, a fashion trend dictated that the folks on Salt Lake City’s east side—the trendsetting side—leave many of their windows blindless and curtainless—entertainment for nighttime walkers. I witnessed happy dinners, sad dinners, loud dinners, lonely dinners. I saw lives filled with television, books, laughter, tears, embraces, friends, and solitude. I never felt shame for peering in curiously, assuming those folks without curtains wanted to share what might otherwise be private moments if they so desired privacy over fashion.

Shortly after we were married, Steve and I used to leave our house in the ninth and ninth area of Salt Lake City around 10 p.m. on a Friday and walk into the early hours of the morning. We did this in every season, in every kind of weather, exploring each other while we explored our city. Conversations that feel invasive and insidious in the confines of four walls flow effortlessly while walking—as if the literal pumping of blood required to move the body coincides with the metaphorical opening of the heart.

One airless summer night we stopped at a park bench in the Gilmore neighborhood and made out like teenagers before continuing our walk. On a winter night, among steady, fat flakes of snow, we dropped off the city streets into Bonneville Glen where a dirt trail runs along Red Butte Creek. Shrouded in snowy limbs that hung over the water and silenced by the storm, the place hovered between pristine beauty and eerie isolation, an immeasurable gift for anyone willing to move on two feet. Whenever we went, it was ours alone.

In the city, we’ve walked gardens, industrial warehouses, junkyards, quaint neighborhoods, wealthy neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, urban streets, creek banks, parks, and cemeteries. We’ve ducked into open houses pretending to be buyers, walked through office buildings and hospitals pretending to have business (looking for an unlocked bathroom), sat in churches to rest, and climbed over fences to get to the other side.

We know our city in ways that would not be available to the person who has no urge to wander. We know the beauty of the city, but we also know the dirty parts, the parts that flower and die, the parts that change, the parts that disappear, and the parts that hang on through the years. And through walking, we know each other in the same way.

* * *

Purposeful Walks. In 2009, shortly after moving to Escalante, I had what a doctor called a series of unfortunate events that included the extraction of a fractured tooth, antibiotics, an infected cyst, more antibiotics, an extreme allergic reaction to antibiotics triggering a twelve-week bout of shingles. The shingles pain was breath-stealing severe. Medications and Lidocaine patches barely took the edge off, and within 30 minutes—5 ½ hours before the next dose—the pain was back full bore. One day, Steve said walking in the desert might make me feel better. I thought him crazy, and to prove it, I agreed to go.

We made the ten-minute drive with me curled into the passenger seat of the truck, moaning. When he pulled off the road, I got out and started walking—fast. I called back to Steve that he would have to catch up; I had pain to outrun.

I walked cross-country and dropped into a small wash off Highway 12 that eventually leads to Phipps Wash and Phipps Arch. It was early spring; the sand was damp and packed, which made for easy walking.  As long as I was moving, the pain was tolerable. When I stopped, the pain caught up with me. We walked for hours that day.

Walking in Phipps Wash

For the next three months, Phipps Wash became hallowed territory. I went every day, sometimes all day, to walk off pain. Although Phipps Arch is a popular hike, I never saw another person, never had to explain the grimace on my face or my need to keep moving. I could—and did—howl and cry at will.

Phipps is where I walk now when life becomes too difficult, too noisy, too confusing. When Steve and I get tangled in each other’s nets, I walk and he knows where to find me.

* * *

Walking on Salt. On the lonely north shore of the Great Salt Lake, when the lake is low, one can walk for miles across a slab of salt that covers the sand like ice. I recommend it.

* * *

Forbidden Walks. Some of the best walks are behind “No Trespassing” signs. When I come upon such a sign, my first thought is “they don’t mean me.” Apparently they do. The last time I ignored such a sign, which I do often because I think the associated risks—getting caught or getting shot—are worth it, a half-uniformed Antelope Island park volunteer stood waiting for me as I trudged through the splendid black, goopy mud along the forbidden shoreline. Every bit worth the lecture and threats I received at the end.

I don’t ignore the signs categorically. If the signs are there to keep me from doing damage to an over-travelled area, I turn back. But if the signs are there for my own safety because someone before me injured himself, then sued someone who didn’t prevent him from his own acts of stupidity in turn prompting them to put up “No Trespassing” signs, which was the case on Antelope Island, I often cautiously—or foolishly—proceed. I also ignore most corporate signs put up in areas that once belonged to my childhood such as Kennecott Copper restrictions in the Oquirrh Mountains and US Magnesium restrictions on Stansbury Island. Their “No Trespassing” signs often serve the purpose of keeping folks from viewing the destruction they heap upon the land or the crap they spew into the air. They hold no persuasion over me.

* * *

Undesirable Walks. Treadmills and shopping malls.

* * *

Walking with Mom. One of the saddest moments in my life was when I realized that my mother had stopped loving to walk. She suffered from aggressive rheumatoid arthritis and when walking became painful for her, she no longer wanted to go. I wasn’t ready.

For a long time she hid it from me—typical of her, never wanting to disappoint her daughter. One weekend, we drove from Tucson to Williams, Arizona, to take the train to the Grand Canyon, something she wanted to do. The train trip was anti-climatic, but I didn’t care. We had a full weekend ahead of us in the Grand Canyon. I knew she wouldn’t be able to hike, but miles of easy strolling along the rim trail awaited us. After we settled into the Maswik Lodge, a ten minute walk from the rim, we entered the warm evening to go to dinner. We had walked less than 20 yards when she dropped onto the nearest bench. Tears flowed freely down her face. Alarmed, I sat beside her and waited for an explanation.

“I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t make it to dinner. I can’t walk that far.”
“Huh?” I said, so clueless, so blind to her painful struggle to walk.

We went back into the room and called a cab to carry us a half mile from our hotel to the El Tovar where we ate dinner with strained cheerfulness as we looked out the window upon walkers along the rim.

Walking had been our way of seeing, our way of getting from one place to another, and most importantly, our way of staying close. We had traveled south to walk the hills and beaches around small Mexican villages; we had traveled east to walk New York City and west to walk San Francisco. We had walked the streets of Tucson where I lived and the streets of Tooele where she lived. Mostly we had walked the streets of our city—Salt Lake City—which we knew intimately because we had traveled it on foot for decades.

When I moved back to Salt Lake City from Tucson in 2004, my mother was still alive, but her walking days were over. I mourned the loss of her arm in mine as we walked maybe more than I mourned her death four years later.

After she died, I spent a crazy number of hours walking the city alone, grieving her absence, noting the places she would have loved—a hidden set of narrow crumbling stairs, the vibrant gardens of spring. I always walked—and still do—through her beloved Mormon temple grounds, a place that filled her with pride for the religion she lived and cherished until her death. Toward her last days, I pushed her through the lush, magnificent temple gardens in a wheelchair—an attempt to keep the two of us in motion.  That’s also a favored bequest from the Mormons—their horticultural prowess. The beauty and love she found there traveled through her crippled hands into mine, while I hid from her the pain in my own hands, not wanting her to know that I too may reach a day when I can no longer walk.

 

A Desert Beyond Fear

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 Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

–Bertrand Russell

On a recent cold, sunny day, my husband and I layered up and took ourselves out to the backyard: the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. For a couple of days we had been spiraling downward through a series of miscommunications and tensions—the culmination of my rigorous dedication to fear, or what Bertrand Russell aptly coined “the tyranny of the habit of fear.” A fresh storm had dropped ten inches of snow with little moisture, giving the snow an airy, crystallized texture that sprayed out in an arc with each footstep and made a shushing sound, as if it were speaking directly to me. Shush. Shush. Shush.

Winter in the backyard

Moving into the elegant world of white-draped red rock is usually enough to strip my mind of the qualms that harass me, but on this particular day, Steve and I both stomped into the desert bearing a commitment to hang onto the somber roles we had adopted. Solemnity is difficult, however, when one is tumbling down hills of snow-covered deep, red sand and skidding off steep angles of slickrock on one’s butt. Still, it took about a half-mile before we were convinced of our absurdity.

Such is the nature of the desert. If you persist in your gravity, the desert will take full advantage—it will have you falling over yourself as you trudge along carrying your blame and angst and fear; it will mock you until you literally and figuratively lighten up and conform to the place. The place will never conform to you. We knew that; that’s why we went. That’s why we always go to the desert when we’re stuck in a cycle of self-induced wretchedness.

* * *

I learned fear early and I learned it well. I had two good role models. My father was fearful of not being adored by all. That fear determined his every action and his every thought. If enough and proper adoration was not forthcoming, his temper flared. He provided me with my first experience—and many follow-ups—of fear. He taught me that danger is ever-present and unpredictable and that hyper-vigilance is a good approach—maybe the only sane approach—to life.

My mother, a sweet and tender woman, was fearful of life in general. If at any given time I didn’t exhibit enough fear, she feared for me, quietly but persistently expressing her worries and words of caution. My mother’s fear sprang from the summer of her thirteenth year when her father was killed in an accident.  Psychotherapist and spiritual teacher Dick Olney would call this the wound of catastrophic expectations. From that point forward, my mother anticipated the worst from life—as did her own mother—and spent much of her life seeking safe haven. Indeed, that may have been an unconscious singular goal of hers: safety. She spoke of the accident with a sadness that seemed to acknowledge her entrapment in the tyranny of the habit of fear. As she aged, her definition of safe haven changed to fit her circumstances, so I believe she died having found it. Lifetime goal achieved.

It took me beyond half a century to realize that I had subconsciously adopted my mother’s lifetime goal: safety. Safety sires caution. Caution breeds fear. I don’t like to admit it, but I also inherited my father’s fear of being unlovable, a fear that Bertrand (excuse my familiarity, but he feels like a friend) points out is always self-fulfilling unless we find a way to get out from under fear’s dominion. I can attest to that fact. I have not yet managed to convince my husband that I am unlovable—he’s a patient and persistent man—but I have managed to introduce fear’s oppression into our marriage.

The list of things I’ve feared at some point in my life is long: dogs, my father, cockroaches, a lack of friends, a lack of solitude, horses, cows, being yelled at, being ignored, love, sex, the lack of love and sex, being alone, being in a relationship, going to school, missing school, being hungry, being poor, being stupid, being stranded in the middle of an ocean (although I never go into the middle of oceans), financial destitution, aging, illness, darkness, parties, brain tumors, being wrong, being hated, being criticized, dressing improperly, not fitting in, conforming, backpacking alone, backpacking in groups, wasting my life, drugs, lack of drugs, heartbreak, humiliation, having nothing to say, saying too much, and, of course, fear itself. The list is endless and cumbersome to navigate.

“Fear,” Bertrand writes, “makes man unwise in the three great departments of human conduct: his dealings with nature, his dealings with other men, and his dealings with himself.”

That sums it up pretty well. I’ve spent many lifetime hours processing fear. It has been such a natural state of mind, I often don’t realize I’m spewing it into the world with my words and actions. The incident that established the recent tension between Steve and me was, in my mind, a simple expression of concerns, in his mind, a paranoid rant. I hate to give him that one, but upon reflection I have to. As often happens, my “concerns” went considerably beyond probable, falling to the far side of remotely possible. In my world, that’s enough for worry, discussion, obsession, and several nights of insomnia while Bertrand’s—and my husband’s—wisdom eludes me.

I’m not alone. We are a country of fear nurturers and fear mongers. I recently saw a television ad that informed me that there are more than 12,000 diseases known to humans. Twelve thousand. We shouldn’t worry though, the sponsor tells us after allowing a few seconds for the enormity of the number to slither in and find a comfortable spot in our psyches. Help is on the way! The sponsor—IBM—has a new, technologically marvelous way of detecting any one of 12,000 diseases. Of course, it cannot help us unless we first buy into the most shameless, bald-faced fear mongering the company can muster while sweetly assuring us “we do this because we care.”

In any given month, my AARP magazine scares the hell out of me with the following helpful questions: Do you have enough for retirement? Could you lose your home? Are you insured for long-term care? Are you prepared for a medical emergency? How can you better the odds that you won’t get Alzheimer’s? Cancer? Heart Disease? What will happen if you lose your job? Are your loved ones protected? Could you be a victim of fraud? Could you be a victim of crime? Who will take care of Fido when you’re gone? Do you get enough vitamin B-12? Vitamin D? Antioxidants? Will social security be around when you need it?

Almost every sector of our society operates on and benefits from fear. Politicians ask for our votes not because they are worthy, but because if we vote for their opponents our lives will surely become a living hell, our hopes and dreams will die an ugly and perverse death. Advertisers warn us of lost love and humiliation if we don’t comply. Insurance companies promise us financial ruin if we dare to be uninsured. Car sellers, mechanics, government officials, investment bankers, media publishers and television producers—all hawking fear. Religions would disintegrate without fear. Our so-called healthcare industry, aided by the mother of all fears—impending death—peddles fear with aplomb.

We now so readily accept fear mongering and so smoothly integrate it into our lives that we’ve turned Bertrand’s words—to conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom—inside out. We consider ourselves wise when we buy into fear and foolish when we don’t. As a woman over 50, I should regularly have a mammogram, a pap smear, a colonoscopy, a cholesterol check, a blood pressure check, a thyroid hormone test, a blood sugar test, a skin cancer check, a vision check, an osteoporosis test, and flu shots. Just in case. Just to be safe. It’s a wise thing to do. And that’s just what’s needed for physical well being setting aside for the moment the recommended financial check-ups, not to mention the precautionary measures needed on the car, the chimney, the smoke detector and the carbon-monoxide detector if I am to prevent catastrophe. The message, often stated overtly alongside the advice, comes through clearly: if you do not comply, you will likely die. If you do comply, your life will be saved. You will be safe.

It’s no surprise that my mother was one of the most obedient citizens of our healthcare industry. She got all of her tests. She followed every doctor’s instructions. She took her pills. In fact, she spent the last seven or so years of her life doing nothing but seeing doctors, having tests performed, following instructions, and taking pills. She died a very old woman at age 79. Official cause of death: natural causes. Actual cause of death? Who knows? But I don’t believe there’s anything natural going on in an aging body trying to process the chemical interactions and side-effects of the seventeen prescription medications my mother was taking—just to be safe.

I, too, gamely signed on to the fear-based health-care paradigm. Shortly after my 50th birthday, I submissively scheduled a mammogram, which showed “something—we’re not quite sure what,” I was told by a somber doctor speaking in a grave, whispering voice much like the funeral director at my mother’s service. Message received. Biopsy scheduled on the spot. Without discussion. Without protest. Protest is difficult when fear is present. When I think back on the moment, Betrand’s words haunt me—fear is . . . one of the main sources of cruelty.

Five thousand dollars out of my own pocket later, I sat across from the same doctor as he beamed brightly. “It was nothing,” he told me smiling widely while he waited for me to offer an audible sigh of relief and join him in his revelry. A high five or a chest butt may have been the appropriate and expected response. “Of course, we were 99 percent sure it was nothing,” he continued, “but we want to be 100 percent sure, don’t we?”

Do we?

The 99 percent figure may have been used only as a figure of speech—I don’t know—but would it not have been possible for him to give me the 99 percent factoid prior to the biopsy? Even if I didn’t have the wherewithal—immersed as I was in the throes of fear—to ask? The answer is likely no. The fear is institutionalized, generalized, and widely accepted. The doctor was simply providing me with exactly what he presumes every one of his patients is seeking: the safety, the pure joy of being 100 percent sure. A fear set to rest.

When I later told this story to a friend, she asked, “But don’t you feel good just knowing it wasn’t cancer? Wouldn’t you have had the biopsy anyway, even if he had told you the odds in advance?”

The answer to the second question is “absolutely not.” The answer to the first question is more complex. Had I not had the mammogram and, hence, the biopsy, I would be living with the same belief that I currently hold: I do not have breast cancer. In other words, the fear was created in the same place and by the same system in which the fear was put to rest. I paid $5,000 for the experience.  And I wonder how often this is true of fear—how often does the cure for the fear precede the fear itself, thereby creating a supply for which there is no demand unless we create it also? I suspect many of our medical, financial, and religious fears operate in this manner.

My friend’s question prompted many other questions: How many hours of my life—including the hours that I need to work to pay for the procedures—am I willing to sacrifice to establish negatives? Is establishing the negative of breast cancer and colon cancer enough? Should I add in the establishment of the negative of heart disease?  Cervical cancer? Are five negatives enough to relieve my fears? Ten? If IBM’s boasts are true, should I rush to establish the negative of all 12,000 diseases known to humans? Do we allow technology to be the factor that determines when we let go of the fear?

Let’s rephrase the questions this way: How much of my life am I willing to devote to fear? How much of my life am I willing to devote to the avoidance of death? And in the end, will it pay off? Will the hours spent avoiding death give me more hours of life? Or fewer? Will they give me a richer life or a diminished one? After all, it is the essence of death, the knowledge of the certainty of it that makes us human, that sets us apart from other animals. Do we lose some of our humanity in the process of expending so much time, energy, and money attempting to thwart death? What have we given up of ourselves in conformance to this fear-based approach to life?

After thinking about this for a long while—being the fear nurturer that I am—I’ve boiled it down to one simple question. Which of the following two options contributes more to my overall health: spending an afternoon in a medical office having tests performed or wandering down the banks of the Escalante River? Because those two choices will always be mutually exclusive, it is a question that I feel compelled to ponder and attempt to answer.

For now, I’m taking a break from mammograms, pap smears, cholesterol checks, blood pressure checks, insurance assessments, retirement calculations, and every other kind of test I should do or have done. I hear the collective gasp. I do understand that tests have saved lives, or more accurately, delayed deaths. I understand the risks. I also understand the costs, and at this point in my life, the cost of holding that much fear is too high. I’m opting to release it.

The one thing I no longer fear is death. I don’t mean to sound glib—it has taken me a long time to reach this point. It might be that an absence of a fear of death is not so strange for someone who has habitually viewed life as a minefield to be navigated. When life is lived as a problem to be solved, death offers the ultimate resolution, the release of all fear, the moment of pure peace.

But there are some—not many it seems—who reach that place of pure peace in life. They have done so by letting go of—or by never being afflicted with—fear. Such is the target I’ve set for myself for 2012. By adopting a steady practice of letting go of fear, my hope is to reach the place of peace in life prior to finding it in death. For someone like me, that’s no small journey. It’s akin to a long-time drug user—living among many other drug users—trying to get clean.

From that place of peace, however transient it may be, I intend to live until I die. For as the Dalai Lama says, “We cannot hope to die peacefully . . . if our minds have mostly been agitated by emotions like anger, attachment and fear.”

* * *

Sometimes in the morning I wake up feeling as if my world is about to fly apart, and it takes a few minutes to pull myself back into my bed, my bedroom, my house—the one where my kind and loving husband moves around the kitchen making coffee, the one where a sweet, asthmatic cat has taken up the still-warm, vacated space on the bed next to me.

I once had a therapist tell me that I likely learned my fear at a pre-verbal stage of life, which means, as I understand it, it got hard-wired in my brain. She called it Armageddon Syndrome. A good, descriptive assessment. It is the deep nature of my fear that makes it an all-or-nothing proposition for me, something that needs to be treated like an addiction. Dabbling in it, however briefly, is sure to bring on a full-scale blackout. The only option is letting go entirely—one moment at a time.

I’ve had throughout my life what I refer to as moments of bravado—a sudden urge to push myself beyond my fear in some big way. Those are the moments responsible for the significant changes in my life. They took me from Tooele, Utah, to New York City, from accounting to writing, and from New York City back home again. Ultimately, my moments of bravado took me to the deserts of the Escalante, a place so stunning in its grandeur it defies fear. If ever there were a place on earth that allows one to enter and dwell at peace, this would be it.

From the outside looking in, my moments of bravado may appear to represent a connected life—a life lived with courage and intent. Yet each moment was taken in sheer terror. In The Courage to Create, Rollo May writes that Kierkegard, Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre all defined courage not as the absence of fear, but as the ability to act in spite of fear. In other words, a life of courage can be lived in small ways, through small decisions. If I go by that definition, I can technically call myself courageous. In the same spirit, if only out of respect for Bertrand Russell, I could call my moments of bravado moments of wisdom.

Treating my fear as an addiction that doesn’t allow wavering often means placing myself in what others see as risky situations: I quit well-paying jobs to write full time; I leave “safe” situations and relationships in search of love and passion; I flee to the red rock to hike when I’m supposed to be working/making money; I push out into the deserts of the Colorado Plateau each spring, unprepared and out of shape, with a 35-pound pack strapped to my back. Many consider my actions foolish, and I often believe the same myself. How wise is it for a woman who fears financial destitution to quit her job (the one with a good salary and health insurance!) during the worst economy in recent time?

Bertrand Russell

The answer lies in Bertrand’s words: Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of will against their mythmaking power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance.

Once again, I can attest to the accuracy of Bertrand’s words. Fear is noisy, and it takes up a lot of space. Very little else—including matters of great importance—can break through. But every once in a while, if I sit on my porch and quiet myself long enough to hear the birds pecking at the fallen walnuts under the black walnut tree, in the part of my gut that is often churning with anxiety, I know that all of the “risky” decisions I’ve identified above are the only things that do keep my world from flying apart. I am certain that those things have done more to “save” my life than any medical test.

When I wake up in the swirl of Armageddon, I have two choices. The first is to lie in bed convincing myself, which takes no more than ten seconds, that the AARP headlines are looming nearby—I will soon lose my house, my husband, and what little money I have. I can probably keep the cat, but he and I will be sharing a food bowl. The other choice is what Rollo May would call the courageous choice: get out of bed, open the blinds, and look to the east where the Escalante River gorge cuts through the sunlit ridge.

The Land of No Use

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My first real love—call it infatuation if you must—was an anthropomorphized pig named Wilbur who shared his pigpen with his wise and loyal friend Charlotte. I identified strongly with Wilbur, a pathetic runt prone to self-pity and easily moved to blubbering hysterics. Wilbur and I spent our early years in much the same manner: desperate for friends, shunned by barnyard animals, and seeking fun, frolic, and warm straw into which we could burrow knowing we are safe and loved. Our search for such an existence gave purpose to our lives.

Charlotte’s Web was first published in 1952, four years before I was born. In my memory, I got the book in first grade, although upon reading Charlotte’s Web as an adult, the book seems too sophisticated for someone in her Dick and Jane years, and I was not a precocious child by any measurement. Nevertheless, I cling to the memory of discovering Wilbur early and holding him close throughout my traumatic grade-school introduction to life.

E. B. White and friend

My next real love—and this was no infatuation for it has lasted well into my sixth decade of life, albeit, with some sizable gaps—was Wilbur’s creator. E. B. White was the humorous, story-telling father I never had. I gaze at pictures of him, each one of them sporting the face—and often the suit coat if not the necktie—of the stern but fair father, his quick wit cloaked by his ubiquitous civility.

Nearly 30 years would pass between my childhood discovery of White and my adult rediscovery of him. During that time, I engaged in the necessary stumbles of life. I flunked out of college, became a bride at 17 and a divorcee soon thereafter, went back to college, became an accountant, made money, lost money, quit counting, married again, and divorced again before I came upon White’s work when a professor recommended The Elements of Style to make up for my spotty education in the basics of good writing. I was more than happy to take advice from my old friend in this manner. But it wasn’t until just past my fortieth birthday, when in a graduate writing program I was assigned to read White’s essay, “Once More to the Lake,” that I began to grasp the quiet magnificence of White’s work.

Exhilarated to discover that the man who gave voice to my fundamental nature through a pig named Wilbur was the same man who created empathy for the suffering of a nameless pig in “Death of a Pig,” I took myself to the warehouse-sized, used bookstore near the University of Arizona campus and purchased every available book written by E. B. White. I walked out carrying six books, fewer than half the books published by White but enough to fill me once again with the joy, compassion, and humanity that is ever-present in his work.

Starting in 1942 and continuing for about a year thereafter, White published a monthly piece in Harper’s Magazine under the heading “One Man’s Meat” and a later collection of essays under the same title. Acting out of utmost reverence, I have stolen the title of White’s column. By doing so, I’ve undoubtedly set myself up for an unpleasant comparison to White, one that can only turn out badly for me—an unfortunate side effect of the decision but not the intent. If I were a good enough writer to steal more from White than his title, his poetic-yet-simple, spot-on prose, for example, or his keen observance of human dilemma, I certainly would, but, alas, I’m limited by my own deficiencies. My lofty goal for stealing White’s title is inspiration in both writing and grammatical correctness, although both will likely fall considerably short of their mark.

In the foreword of One Man’s Meat,White describes the collection of essays as “a personal record . . . which I wrote from a salt water farm in Maine while engaged in trivial, peaceable pursuits, knowing all the time that the world hadn’t arranged any true peace or granted anyone the privilege of indulging himself for long in trivialities.”

My sweet writing shed (photo and construction by Jacob Croft, Croft Remodeling and Restoration)

That seems to me a perfect description of what I’ve started here—a personal record written from a small shed set under the “junk trees” on my town parcel in south-central Utah while engaged in trivial and usually peaceable pursuits. Though I hear nothing from my shed at the moment but the singsong of crickets and an occasional complaint from a dog disturbed by one of fewer than 800 people or one of more than 800 skunks in town, I’m not fooled into thinking the world has arranged any truer peace now than it had in 1938 when White began the essays later published as One Man’s Meat.

Of course White’s essays were far more than a personal record. White was feeling the self-condemnation that comes from residing in a place “beyond gun range” during wartime, and his words reflect his burden. The essays of One Man’s Meat are also significantly more than a historic record. White’s insights transcend both time and place, and many of his observations have, as he once put it, “the odor of durability to them.” In July of 1938, in an essay entitled “Removal,” White observed the nation’s growing affection for the latest technological invention—television—and lamented that “sound ‘effects’ are taking the place once enjoyed by sound itself . . . and television sights may become more familiar to us than their originals.” White feared that we would “forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.” As the dead-on accuracy of White’s misgivings fade without notice into our collective consciousness, I immerse myself in his words, knowing that he’s speaking directly to me, believing that as he and his “vile old dachshund, Fred,” throw slop to the pig, they do so with a hint of disconcertion for my welfare in this time and place.

I, too, hope—in the modern version of a monthly column known as a blog, an ugly but appropriate word—to humbly set down more than a personal record. Although I confess to being perplexed by what might seize the interest of the masses at any given moment, I am quite sure that a personal record of my life would be of little interest for I am not a sometimes-blond starlet nor a soon-to-be-released-from-rehab rocker nor a nasty honey badger, though I share some characteristics with the latter.

But I, too, sit out of gun range at a time of war, although I believe the similarities between White’s war and my war are few. I remain stunned at the zest with which we rushed into my war and at the ease with which we ignore it on a day-to-day basis—at least those of us who do not have a vacancy where a family member once stood—living White’s feared prophecy that allows us to forget the primary and near in favor of the secondary and remote assisted by 285 channels. And I too, like White, made the choice three years ago to permanently leave a city, for which I have a great fondness, in favor of a rural locale. It was not a moral choice—I hold no judgments on the ability of one place over the other to infuse a life with spiritual enlightenment—only a personal preference. Unlike White, I grew up with the smell of cow manure in my nostrils and hay leaves in my underwear, with the absence of anonymity (something I very much loved and miss about the city), and with a singular meaning attached to the phrase “going to the store.” I hold no romantic notions of rural life—I knew I would be witness to the anguish of dogs permanently attached to the ends of chains, earwigs in my kitchen cupboards, and flies in numbers only horse shit can demand, all of which I am asked to accept with as little comment as possible. Nor do I place myself in any loftier position having come from the city than those who were smart enough to stay put from the get-go.

I chose Escalante, Utah, because it appeared to be a town that had somehow held onto itself over the last hundred years of exponential population growth and insidious technology—two things that I’m struggling, and often failing, to embrace. Nevertheless, there’s movement underfoot here, and many, thrown off balance, are grappling to regain equilibrium. As happens in small towns over time, things change. Many towns both east and west of the hundredth meridian have gone through it. Factories close, cotton mills shut down, steel mills rust and crumble. Towns shift, adjust, and recover—or they don’t. People adjust and recover—or they don’t. The rest of the world goes on about its business with a fair amount of indifference.

A few months ago, the mayor of Escalante appeared in front of the Congressional Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, summarized our town’s woes, and placed the blame for them at the feet of the federal government—specifically at the nicely shined, Italian leather shoes of former President Bill Clinton, who in 1996 created the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (GSENM), which essentially engulfs the town of Escalante in a three-sided hug. Some in town are feeling the gentle warmth of that hug as if Grandma had met them at the kitchen door with milk and cookies. Others are feeling constricted in what feels like a straitjacket.

Escalante is divided, not quite equally, between “locals” and “move-ins.” I am marked as a move-in, and, indeed, that’s what I am. We are most commonly split down religious lines—Mormon and non-Mormon. In the company of the opposite group, we pretend this is not a big deal, but it is. The Mormons settled Escalante in 1875 and, for more than six generations, enjoyed a stronghold in town with little interference from outsiders.  The county newspaper, which appears in my mailbox free of charge each week, still recounts baptisms and confirmations, the comings and goings of missionaries, visits from family, church job assignments, and trips over the mountain to the see the doctor.

The mayor’s public comments reignited a not-very-dormant tension that runs a jagged line through the two distinct groups and gives the town its reputation as a crabby little place—a reputation we simultaneously abhor and cherish. Tempers flared, folks chose up sides, and words were flung—some with measured restraint and some with wild abandon. I admit to being one of the flingers.

In front of the committee, the mayor spoke of the “devastating social and economic impact” of the GSENM to Escalante including a lack of jobs, a decrease in real personal and per capita income, an unstable town economy with a reliance on tourism, floundering schools that annually face the possibility of closure, and young families moving away.  A representative from the nonprofit research group Headwaters Economics, who testified at the same hearing, painted the opposite picture with equally broad strokes: more jobs, an increase in personal and per capita income, a thriving tourism economy. Both speakers threw down statistics, the malleable tool of the political trade, and both speakers attached their facts—the good, the bad, and the ugly—solidly to the creation of the GSENM.

I know not the accuracy of either set of facts. I write not from a position of factual knowledge but from a position of observance. Filtered through my own incurable state of bewilderment, I’ve observed the following:

Politicians and those who play on the political playground—such as congressional subcommittee testifiers and radio talk show hosts—clearly understand the power of words. Those with integrity respect the power and use it accordingly. Those without integrity harness the power and use it disingenuously. Unfortunately, we have significantly more of the latter than the former, and I don’t imagine that will change anytime soon. A widely practiced misuse of language is the rush to assign cause and effect where mere correlation exists. This is done either out of ignorance—those with the microphones slept through their basic logic course in school—or out of arrogance—they believe their constituency stupid enough or lazy enough to be blinded by statistics alone without the requisite reasoning attached. I fear we’ve proven them right, which seems to have given them license to continue the practice unabated.

Another thing I’ve observed in town during the months since the mayor made his national speaking debut is an omnipresent sense of loss and the fear that accompanies it. I cannot pinpoint concrete evidence of it, cannot provide examples that would illustrate it, but I’m certain of its presence. I recognize it, as many do, because it is a common American experience. In fact, my own obscure reason for moving to Escalante boils down to this: I was trying to assuage my own feelings of loss. And it worked. But my gain is another person’s loss.

I grew up in Tooele, Utah, in the 60s and 70s. My earliest memories include Swan’s Grocery, a two-cash register, raw meat-smelling establishment run by a single family, the members of which called me by name as they chatted with my mother, soothingly similar to Griffins Grocery in Escalante. During my lifetime, Swans was replaced by Allen’s Foodtown, which was replaced by Albertson’s, which was replaced by Smith’s, which was joined and dwarfed by Walmart Supercenter, and the town tripled in size and filled with strangers as quickly as it filled with fast food. The town where I swam in ditches, traveled by bicycle, and terrorized horny toads in open fields disappeared, and although the loss of childhood place is one that I, no doubt, share with the majority of Americans over the age of 50—urban and rural—it feels personal to me. If I’m honest with myself, I’ll admit that for a long time I felt rather proprietary about that place and a little bitter toward the newcomers, as if each of them held some responsibility for my loss. And now, when I meet a “local” in the Escalante post office, the person who grew up in this town, whose mother and grandmother grew up in this town, I see my bitter self in their eyes. It doesn’t matter how friendly I am or how good I am or where I came from, I represent their loss. The loss is real, and there’s a deep sadness attached to it. I get that.

In Escalante, the sorrow surrounding the loss is intensified by the single thing we speak about only in small groups if at all: religion. In my observations, when a fear is voiced that the town is dying, that people are leaving to find work elsewhere, the real fear is that the town is changing. In 1950, the population of Escalante was 773; in 2010, it was 797 with a few drops and gains during the six decades in between. The town is not dying, but it is changing. According to a 2010 study done by Todd Goodsell, a sociology professor at Brigham Young University, only 66 percent of the town’s population is Mormon compared with 100 percent in the not-too-distant past.

There is a belief among locals in town that had the Monument not been established, the vast and wild Kaiparowits Plateau may have been opened to coal mining establishing jobs for all who wanted them, and that those who wanted them would have been the children and the children of the children of locals, thereby resolving the problem of the changing religious demographic. Senator Orrin Hatch has proclaimed that the establishment of the GSENM cost rural Utah “500 high-paying jobs.” (Again, those malleable statistics with cause and effect attached, sans reasoning or evidence.) There’s a certain sense of “ownership by proximity” of the land—demonstrated by the mayor’s and the senator’s comments—although it has always been federal land, owned by many not few. Whether or not the Kaiparowits would have become a coal mine, of course, remains unknowable, but I recently read that Virginia has the second lowest unemployment rate in the nation, largely attributed to its coal-mining industry. I also read that Virginia has the second highest rate in the nation of death by black lung, largely attributed to its coal-mining industry, so it is possible that those jobs, had they materialized, would have done as much to shrink the population as to bolster it.

Many move-ins also share this belief—that the establishment of the GSENM may have prevented the Kaiparowits Plateau from being opened to coal mining. Many are here for exactly that reason—to celebrate and build a life around access to wild and remote space. I’m one of them.

What is likely true is that the GSENM has contributed to the changing religious and ideological shift in Escalante—filled the town with strangers, many of them plopped into the catch-all category often uttered with disdain: radical left-wing liberal environmentalist. I proudly hold my position in that category—there’s not a single word in that string of words that I’m ashamed to claim. I’m also sixth-generation Mormon (albeit lapsed) and the daughter of a small-time rancher who ran cattle on Utah public lands, and I proudly hold my position in those categories. I have no intent and no means to clean up those contradictions.

As a move-in in Escalante, I, of course, want to feel welcome and accepted without regard to my spiritual or political beliefs. But according to research by psychologists Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry, optimism and happiness are increased, and anxiety and pessimism decreased, when we surround ourselves with a tribe or band of supportive people—people who largely share our interests and beliefs and strive for a common purpose. Mormons intuitively know this; they’ve banded together for safety and happiness since the beginnings of the church in the early 1800s. When the band begins to break down or disappear, as it has done for the long-term residents of Escalante, anxiety and pessimism follow. The fear and sadness for what has been lost, and will likely continue to be lost as the town evolves, cannot be dismissed lightly if we ever hope to find peace among us.

Change here represents loss of identity to town and people. According to geographer Robert Hay, the depth of one’s bond to a place is affected by one’s ancestral and cultural sense of place.  He believes that generations of family on certain land create a deeper spiritual bond to a place than can be created simply by length of residence. That’s no small thing, especially to Mormons whose historical story includes the establishment and loss of many beloved towns and places, which is what landed them here in the first place 135 years ago.

Escalante Post Office, the "hub" of Escalante.

As a move-in, I think about it this way: if I were to knowingly move into an all-Amish community, would I expect the members of that community to welcome me warmly and embrace my divergent points of view? I do strongly believe, however, that in a town of 800 people an opportunity remains to employ the power of words with authenticity in spite of our cultural and ideological differences. I’ll be happy to listen if someone wants to chat in the post office or the grocery store or even track me down at home. I’m also fine passing in benign silence if that’s the preferred choice of my neighbors.

I moved back to Utah after being gone close to 20 years, vowing to never leave again and seeking exactly what Hay mentions—the spiritual bond to my ancestral place. But I found, as many have before me, that my ancestral place has been buried under a Walmart footprint. I understand the sense of loss in Escalante, but I cannot stop it nor would I try if it meant coal mining in the Kaiparowits, creating, in my heart and mind, a loss so fathomless there’d be no chance of recovery.

The other day, my husband and I drove deep into the beautifully sparse and quiet land of the Kaiparowits Plateau. After a while, we parked and walked down a wash that had been well traveled by cattle, the prints of which were intermixed with an occasional boot print. Eventually we were enticed into a side canyon that required enough rock climbing at its entrance to discourage bovine exploration. After we walked for less than an hour in sand free of evidence of man or beast, we reached the steep walls of a box canyon and could go no further. We spread our lunch and ourselves on a rock and sat in silence sharing the heat of the sun’s rays. Both of us felt it—the dramatic realization that we were alone. Truly alone. We immediately convinced ourselves that no other human had ever walked that route or lingered on that particular rock, in that particular box canyon. Unlikely, but if it is possible anywhere, it is possible on the Kaiparowits Plateau.

I looked at my husband whose body was built for the desert. Like a perfectly still lizard, he blends with his environment as if he were given that gift to protect himself from predators—his frame angled to drape effortlessly over rock, his skin the color of desert sand, his eyes the color of juniper berries. And although he daily lives a life of peace, a palpable tranquility emanated from him at that moment, in that place. I turned away from him, closed my eyes, and felt it also—a reverberating murmur gurgling through the body. I knew then, from the deepest core of my physical organism, something that I had only intellectualized before: I knew exactly what we had sacrificed in our zeal to “use” the land, to make the land “work for us.” We’ve sacrificed the instinctive human, the natural human, the animal human. We have sanctioned a painfully slow and ugly death for ourselves. And there’s some part of each of us that knows the truth of this.

I’m not a person who rushes to join many causes, although I have nothing but respect for those who do. Nevertheless, I have pondered the question, “What matters enough to me to sacrifice what I have?” I found my answer that day on the Kaiparowits Plateau. I would fight the destruction, the tearing apart of that powerful, wild place. There are many arguments for leaving the heavily fossilized and geologically rich plateau undisturbed. It can teach, and has taught, us much about our history. But I’m arguing for its protection on a level that cannot be measured in scholarly study, in dollars, in jobs, or in uses. I’m arguing for something that cannot be measured by any standard generally accepted in our society. I’m arguing for its protection on a spiritual level.

I fear that we are several generations past the human animal now—a fact that some find comforting. I do not. I realize that some who visit the Kaiparowits Plateau and see fine, black silt oozing from the rock will feel nothing more than a sense of wasted opportunity. But left alone, the Kaiparowits Plateau has the capacity to ignite a profound shift in consciousness, has the ability to locate immediate knowledge in the gut. There are damn few places left in the United States holding onto that sort of potency, and we desperately need them. Let’s please, for God’s sake, for once in our lives, leave something the hell alone and see if we can’t find some human value in that. Let the Kaiparowits Plateau be that one experiment in human restraint, and let’s see if we can’t recapture a little dignity, a little humility, and maybe even a little humanity in the process.

* * *

I started my writing career—if I may be so bold—as an essayist before turning to full-length nonfiction and fiction. I now eagerly return to the essay form without fear, hurling myself headlong into E. B. White’s description of the essayist: “Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays,” something I intend to do once a month in this location for as long as my effrontery and stamina persist. I invite comment here—a technological marvel that White escaped and one that certainly has the capacity to put a crimp in one’s effrontery. But as White once wrote, “In resenting progress and change, a [wo]man lays [her]self open to censure,” so I embrace it heartily. Please join me. Use this space to comment, discuss, rage, cry, or simply sigh.

* * *

An observation on the reputation of writers: The other day a nice woman—intent on smoothing over the tension between locals and move-ins—asked, “What do you do?” I replied, “I’m a writer,” to which she replied, “Is your husband also retired?”