Zion

FCA 4/26/97   Zion

The twilight shimmers and the crescent moon stands brightly offset by the comet. The comet. My God what a thing! From where does it come? Our cozy corner of the solar system is visited by a stranger, a traveler, a kind of galactic plankton riding on the tides of time and space itself.

Well I am back in Zion after a six year absence. It is ten and three quarters hours from Tucson with a long break in Flagstaff and lunch in Cameron where the Navajo waitress said “is there only one of you?” I facetiously turned around to see if there was someone behind me and she got all nervous and blushed. Things start to really open up going north out of Flagstaff on 89. You are then in the full blown Colorado plateau country. It is colorful, dramatic and entirely different from southeast AZ.  The Chinle formation and Vermillion Cliffs are stunningly weird. Going north you start to see fossilized sand dunes, the Navajo sandstone and it all gets to looking like a Steig cartoon.

As you come out of Jacob Lake toward Fredonia there is a lookout where you can see practically all of the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Bill Clinton has done at least one really good thing with that although the locals don’t like it. The Monument will interfere with plans for resource extraction. The region is in for some change. I passed by places I had been with my 1990 SCAs and it felt good to focus on those times. The Kaibab lumber mill was shut down in Fredonia, still with log piles around and stacks of finished lumber unsold. The PALCO mill up in northern CA is so big that this one looked like a toy in comparison.

Zion is a special place and I’m glad to be back. The wind is brisk and cold and it will be a peaceful, silent night alone up in the ponderosa and cedar forest. It is nice to sleep for free in the middle of no where, out of the grips of consumer society.

With a multi-day hike down Hop Valley to LaVerkin Creek, seeing certain things jarred memories from six and seven years ago. I recognized the spot where I jumped out of the bushes and scared Stephanie, the places we worked, the camp spot where a squirrel ate part of Sasha’s Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, old swimming holes, tree frogs, hanging gardens, it was like the people were there but somehow masked by time. Their presence lived in my memory as their lives slipped through this space. Over in Zion canyon there was Boris, Brian, Chris and Daphne, Jennifer and Sasha, Jake, Brady, Todd, Stephanie, Aris, Shannon, Scooter and Tom, Lynn and Tereza, Vera Smith and the geology lecture at Lava Point, the campsites by different fence lines, Cottam’s place, Stuart and the trail crews. By the office was Dave K., Preston Lamar Shakespeare, Dispatch and in town were the same restaurants, Scooter’s old houses and Shakespeare the dog. A lot of memories came back. The soft glow of the sunset on red Navajo sandstone in La Verkin Creek brings a subtle and strong feeling from the heart of all the times I’ve had here and all the people I met.