The Concrete River

The Concrete River

    Our escape of sorts was a simple drive south where connections and phone lines would be available but off and on (yes, there are still areas where our cell phone signal drops off and Internet connections and speeds are iffy at best).  Leaving the southern part of the state, we entered areas with names such as Copper Pocket and White Rocks and Lava Ridge.  We were in an ancient land, a land once occupied by both Anazazi and Paiute Indians, but those were only the recent human settlers.  The park's site describes the area a bit more accurately: Transported by wind more than 183 million years ago, tiny grains of quartzite sand covered much of what we now call Utah.  These sand dunes, up to 2,500 feet thick, eventually were cemented into stone.  Burnt orange to creamy white in color, Navajo sandstone, the predominant rock in the park, is what remains of the ancient desert sand sea.  Years earlier, a ranger spoke of such petrified sands and salts, the area under Arches National Park now a frozen ocean of salt nearly 1.5 miles thick...all from tiny grains of sand and tiny molecules of water.

    I had mentioned this to my wife as we drove into this areas, it's beauty striking as we descended ever deeper through the winding slot of rock, as if a rolling dory floating ever so quickly through yet another Grand Canyon.  Deeper and deeper we went into this heart of rock, the walls rising ever higher, their colors changing as quickly as the shadows of the clouds.  Soon, we would enter the "ocean," the flat plain we now call a desert; and even sooner, we would be heading back up, ready to exit our moving boat and touch the real ground, to leave the paved access and walk across some of these tiny grains of quartzite sand.  One couldn't help but marvel at the chaos and upheaval so vividly contrasting with the colors and beauty of the area.  Frozen and collapsed lava tubes beckoned one into their openings, a tease as they closed only 50 feet away, only to reveal another opening further up the trail.  This entire area was locked, extinct in our terminology but perhaps only pausing like a scab forming over a wound, the life of the earth still bubbling somewhere deep beyond our visual imagination.

    Such areas have always brought me home, my wife knowing that my cremated remains are destined for a volcanic return (my brother has joked that why the bother over a cremation when, if that is my wish, it would be easier to simply throw my body into the burning caldera?).  I somehow find peace in such areas, as if coming home to ancient beginnings.  We all have such places; and for some, it might be as simple as a home or a country or a stretch of beach.  Somehow, something seems to call us and remind us and wake us. 

   In this case, the effort was to simply have a break from all that was happening, much of which didn't happen (there were items that simply couldn't be ignored such as my mother's house and its documents that needed signing, and the picking of a rehab facility for my mother and the arranging of transportation in moving her to the facility, and the discharge from the hospital and the cancelling of her scheduled primary doctor's appointment, and the contact with the attending physician regarding her insurance...looking back now, maybe we really didn't get away).  But it was enough of a pause in the daily hectic-ness of it all, the beauty of the canyon helping us to once again see the bigger picture, to feel our own smallness in both size and time, the now-frozen lava reminding us that not so long ago it was alive, a life force of the planet helping to shape and create what we now walked on.(the place we were hiking was called Snow Canyon, and as with so many other such parks and areas, the name has nothing to do with the weather but rather with the early European discoverers --forget the early native Americans who occupied this area hundreds of years earlier and had already named it-- in this case, the early Mormon cattle ranchers were named Snow). 

One of many lava tubes at Snow Canyon, Utah

    
    We all need these "breaks," even if they prove short-lived.  Recently we talked to an acquaintance from our early days at work, he now owning a slew of apartment buildings and wanting more, him telling us about how this has been a part of his family who were even wealthier from owning even more apartments and other real estate and how he escaped to his time share in Hawaii and blah, blah, blah.  But when we asked about his vacationing or getting away the conversation came back to his time share and how much he enjoyed it now that he was retired and yet how little time he actually had to get away now that he had so many apartment buildings and blah, blah, blah.  He loved it, he said.  We could only think of how time plays no favorites.  Perhaps he truly did love it, his series of acquisitions soon to be a tale for a younger generation of how their uncle once owned a slew of apartment buildings...and a time share in Hawaii, can you believe it?  Did he visit anywhere else, some of the little ones might ask...not really, but he loved his apartment buildings.  None of this was for us to judge, because he really did seem to love that ownership.  But everyone needs a change now and then, even if it's as simple as going to a movie or having a date night or a moment alone in a room for meditation.  It becomes alone time and alone time can be just you or a night with others, the aloneness coming from leaving the everyday behind, even if just for a tiny bit.  In our case, despite all the calls and having to go over lists of insurance papers and choose a decent rehab facility, we became "alone" once we stepped onto the ancient sands.  As if jolted by a live wire, the wind-blown quartzite grounded us and shocked us back a few steps, recharging us and renewing a bit of our energy.  It was a modern bit of old history, history coming alive and bringing life...as it has done for eons.