[at-l] My Thanksgiving in Utah (a longish trip report)

[pmags@yahoo.com (Paul Magnanti)]

"Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding,
lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. 
May your rivers flow without end, meandering through
pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and
castles and poets towers into a dark primeval forest
where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal
and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red
rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of
endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient
unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled
cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches,
where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the
high crags, where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits
for you …beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

—EDWARD ABBEY"

Edward Abbey, the eloquent (and cantankerous) voice of
the outdoors in the southwest describes what spending
time in the canyon country of Utah is like so vividly.
I was fortunate enough to spend my long Thanksgiving
weekend in the heart of Abbey's spiritual home: the
Escalante National Monument of Utah. 

How to describe this area? It is indeed gorgeous and
breathtaking. Stark and desolate (yet striking) above
the canyon rim... lush vegetation, rivers and wildlife
below. 
Red sandstone mixed with light and shadows in the slot
canyons. Pools of water reflecting the sunlight in a
remote crevasse as you turn the corner. Buttes with
multicolored rocks showing the natural history of the
area. Arches the size of football fields framing the
cloudless blue sky. Looking at a mountain that is the
spiritual center of the Navajo nation. Seeing
petroglyphs that were etched in the stone when the
Roman legions were walking the Appian Way.  Seeing the
northern lights pink and shimmering at four in the
morning with the only other light being stars against
the dark sky. Hearing the wind howl as you are in your
tent with lightning and thunder, soon snowing
afterwards and seeing a coating of white over the red
rocks. 

Magical, and unlike anything I have ever experienced
before in the outdoors.

And what did I do to see all these wonderful sites?
Trudging through cold water, having scratching and
bruises all over my body from shimmying through the
rocks, and enjoying myself immensely.  Hiking in a
deep and wide canyon being 80-100 miles from anything
that even could be called a hamlet, never mind a town.
Camped in an area where packing up just before dawn
lets me see a sunrise over the distant buttes. 

And Thanksgiving itself? A day to hike through this
magical wonderland, and spend time at night eating,
and drinking and enjoying a holiday with other people
whose family is also far away......yet somehow we
formed our own family that weekend. 

Yeah...I had a good Thanksgiving.

Mags

ps. will post the photos online in about a week. I
used up three rolls of film, so hopefully there are
some good shots in there.



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The true harvest of my life is intangible.... a little stardust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched
--Thoreau

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