You can scroll the shelf using ← and → keys
Wherever you are right now, drive 14 miles. Depending on the direction you’re coming from, you’ll either turn right or left at the fourth unmarked dirt road. Follow this road until it forks. Turn and drive toward the sun — east or west, depending on the time of day.
After a sufficient amount of time, pull over and park your vehicle under the big juniper tree — the one with the illegal fire ring, shotgun shells and beer cans under it. Be careful so that the glass shards don’t puncture your Go-Lite neoprene shoes. After parking, fiddling with your gear and checking the nifty compass on your key ring that doubles as a faux carabineer (strong enough to hold the weight of, well, your keys), it’s time to hit the trail. Drop into the first wash on your right and follow the coyote tracks. After two hours of brisk power hiking — or 30 minutes meandering — you will come to a large, red rock that is distinguishable from the other large, red rocks by its largeness and redness. Admire it and continue on.
Soon, you will cross an extraneous road. And another one. And then another goddamn road. Curse it, piss on it … and then get used to it. There are many more. Next, when the wind shifts direction, so should you. (And remember, keep drinking water! This is the desert, after all, and there are many more roads to piss on.) Next, ascend — all the way to the top! — the sand-slide that forces you to take three steps back for every half-step forward.
However, if you hit the pristine, untrammeled, untouched area, you’ve gone too far. Stop and go forward in time.
Finally, after hours, days — and sometimes years — of this, after cursing the author, after asking repeatedly, “Are we there yet?”, you take off your Oakleys, open your eyes and realize, holy crap!, you’ve always been there. The whole time you’ve been waiting to get to the money spot that’s worthy of bragging rights and interminable slideshows, you’ve been surrounded by expanses of redrock, fine coral sands, pungent sage, inviting potholes, forgotten drainages full of remnants of the past, canyon wren song and the dizzying swoops of swallows. The first Indian paintbrush of the year is blazing at your feet, and the most beautiful cloudscape that no atlas can map is above your head.
In your search for that one brushstroke of Eden, you missed the whole damned canvas full of paradise.
Now that you’ve reached your destination, don’t retrace your steps to the car — in fact, think about abandoning that hulk of metal — but instead find a way to make a loop or a zigzag or a geometric shape we don’t yet have a name for. Thank the author for your enlightenment. Send money. Repeat as necessary.
Regular contributor Jen Jackson’s last piece for the Gazette was “Hope is the Things with Feathers,” which appeared in #172. She lives in Moab.
http://www.mountaingazette.com/mountain-notebook/a-hikers-guide-to-the-desert/
