After Storms

There was a quiet as I drove to town. Something in the noise of the last three days of storms had confused my thinking. I had to stop and get a picture of what the snow storms had done to the mountains. More important to me, I think, is that the blues I had been feeling from slate skies was leaving as the blueness of the heavens appeared. I could hear the quietness of the scene even from the city.

I have hiked most of the canyons along this range. I've never been to the top. In the back of my head I have that as a goal this next spring or summer. Up one of these canyons is a nice waterfall. It's a popular hike in the spring as snowmelt flies off the mountain testing its wings against gravity. Right now its a frozen trickle sleeping under a covering of ice. If summer comes quick echoes of shattering glass will fill the daytime air. If summer sneaks into the canyon the soft sound of distant rivers will grow with the heat. Those concerts are a couple months away but it's fun to dream of having tickets and getting a good seat.

After taking the picture, I pulled my truck into a parking lot and maneuvered it so that the sun was coming through the side window, warm on my face. I wanted to feel heat. I started to read a book and enjoy the light. I'm not sure how long I had dozed off, but was awakened with a pain in my neck. My chin burried in my chest. Strangely, the book was still in my hands and opened to the page I had been reading. I start the truck and decide to drive over to Ogden River.

I like to check the winter water flows in the Ogden River. The canyon section below Pineview Dam can run quite low. The gradient of the canyon, the plunge pools, and the introduction of warm water from hot springs in some sections keep the river from icing up too much. As is normal, the flows are low. I see a couple of brown trout nosing around picking midge pupae from just under the surface. Their slow and deliberate movement ever so gently disturbes the water and takes the mirrored meniscus from realism to impressionism.

I have a hard time seeing color during the winter. I see brown, black, shades of gray and tan, olive hues and some blue in refected sky and transparent snow. I dream of trout. They can add the colors: butter yellow, orange, and red.

Plunge pools mix air, movement, and sound. Water with little motion in long, slow runs suddenly drops and migrates through boulders and rocks, churning with life before mellowing into the next section of quiet flow.

When the trout are still, the reflecting lines of tree trunks reconnect and angle out over the water reaching for the bank and disappearing into the snow and landscape.

There is a feeling of peace that comes to me. Year after year of inspection, I find that nothing really changes here only with the seasons. Come spring and summer shades of green will appear. I have learned to appreciate that color. It's beauty and significance has been added to my life, hopefully to never leave.

Follow the Heart

Dark comes early evening, late Fall, in Utah's west desert. I didn't care. I needed to get away. I took a dirt road leading into the sunset. The western vista was nothing but tints and shades of plum and pomegranate. The longer I drive, the darker the shades.

I have to clear my mind. Heading into remoteness one of my ways to do it. You could say I was running from issues, but I was taking them with me, and looking for a place to bury them; a place where no one else would find them--a place with few footprints.

I turn left at a fork in the road and take the lower road along a volcanic outcropping. The broken rock blacker than dusk. Soon, the sky and rock will blend and become one. I turn off the main dirt road onto a very poor turnout and follow the rocky base of an old railroad grade for several hundred yards. I park and immediately hike up the ridge and into some rolling hills.

The sun is just below the horizon but still casting long shadows of sage and rabbitbrush like long arms with hundreds of reaching fingers. I walk with a quick pace dodging the fingers as they try to grasp my ankles. Ahead, I see a set of rocks that invite me to sit, think, and listen. I angle up the side of a sloping hill, reach the rocks, and sit down.

Now what? Dig a hole? Bury my heart? Listen? I decide to listen. Coyotes howl and yip, organizing for the evening hunt, or more likely, notifying the packs of my intrusion. Surround sound at its best. I've heard this yipping and howling often, but I am never able to determine how many coyotes are involved. It always sounds like hundreds. I read once, that after a coyote howls, he is unable to howl again for some time. If this is true, then there really are hundreds of coyotes around me. Eventually, all the singing stops, and all that remains is silence. Stillness.

From my rock seat, I look around and realize I can't see distance anymore. I see blackness. I'm out far enough that there is no ambiant light. No city light pollution. No moon. Dark!

I stand and try to see a landmark. Just as I knew would happen, the sky and rock have mixed together. Which way did I walk from the truck? How far have I walked? This doesn't happen to me. I am lost! All the things I have learned were running through my head. Did I leave a detailed trip plan at home? No. Did I bring the minimum amount of survival gear? No. It was just a drive and a hike to get away. I had nothing but a pocketknife. What good is a pocketknife in this situation? All I need to do is locate my truck and get out of this black landscape.

What have I learned about traveling in wild places? What have I learned to do when lost? I remember the number one survival tool is the mind. Remain positive! No need to panic. The truck is out there. I couldn't have hiked that far. Relax. Stop. That's it stop. Now think.

There's the Big Dipper. Follow the two stars on the bottom of the dipper out in a line until it hits a bright star. There it is, Polaris, the North Star. That direction is north. So what? I have no clue from which direction I came. North is meaningless. Or is it? Let's see. I know I hiked uphill facing the setting sun, that would be west. I know that the area I'm in is approximately forty-one degrees north latitude so if I was walking toward the setting sun I must have walked from the north--so the North Star is helpful. Stay calm.
I remember I drove along an old railroad grade for a few hundred yards. All I have to do is walk down the hill until I hit the railroad grade and then follow it northward until I see the truck.

I reach into my pocket to make sure I still have my keys. I pull them out and remember that my key ring is a single LED mini-flashlight. Added security. It's light isn't much, but surprisingly bright in a very dark desert. The light improves calmness and slows adrenaline.

I come off the hill and find the railraod grade. Angling toward the North Star I head down the grade. It seems I walked much farther than I remember. I pause to question my direstion. Surely, I did not hike this far. Think again. Follow your mind or follow your heart? I dislike that question. That question is one of my most difficult. Think! Thinking has to do with the brain. Something doesn't feel right. Feeling has to do with the heart. I've already done the thinking. Follow the heart. Heart says, keep going in the direction I'm going. I do and find the truck.

I get into the truck, drive out to the main dirt road, and head out of the desert. It's a little over two hours drive. As I finally get out of the sage flats and up over the last small range of mountains, I can see thirty or forty miles into the distance, the gleaming lights all along the Wasatch Front. My mind now clear--I'm heading home.