The Importance of Pie and Experiencing Insignificance

8/6

This morning I returned to Capitol Reef for a full day of hiking and exploring. The drive back into the park was just as spectacular as I remembered, and more. Rocky scenery is just so much more interesting when you have a good idea of what the rocks are really telling you. A tall orange rock proclaims the majesty of a fossilized sand dune, a soft multicolored slope whispers of its history of tidal flats or a muddy marine realm, and blocky black boulders reminisce over the violence of volcanoes. The ordinary becomes extraordinary (or the extraordinary becomes extra-extraordinary) when you can interpret the ancient history of the Earth all around you.

I started out with a relatively simple trail up to the Hickman Arch, which I’ve never seen before. It's a pretty short trail and an easy hike, barring the initial climb. Fortunately, I've spent the past week working my lungs hard at high elevations, so it was a snap.

Took a while to get this photo as the trail was pretty heavily trafficked

Right underneath the arch, I found a giant rock full of carvings and graffiti. At first, I was offended and a little outraged. Who claws their name into rocks in a national park?? But then I looked a little closer, and saw the dates under some of the names. Some of the carvings dated back to the 1930's! And just like that, unsightly disrespectful graffiti became something of historical significance to be viewed with awe. Funny how that happens.

As I made my way back down the trail, I saw the clouds starting to gather. Ugh! Last time I was here, some major storms really put a damper on our Capitol Reef experience. I was determined not to let rainstorms ruin it again.

I headed down the scenic drive first, figuring that the dramatic clouds would be ideal when juxtaposed against the uplifted strata of the front of the Capitol "Reef". That, and I know that the scenic road is prone to flooding, and I had absolutely no interest in getting Jane stuck in a flash flood.

Yes, Jane is wearing a GoPro! And yes, I do have a video of this drive... which I will post once I figure out what to do with it. 

I didn't stop at many places on the scenic drive, as the clouds had really started to close in and I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance. My plans to hike a wash were quickly revised, and I headed to the visitor center to ask about an alternative. A ranger suggested the Cohab Canyon Trail, which sounded like a pretty good option for an early afternoon hike.

But first, I had to stop at a very important waypoint. You see, Capitol Reef has a really amazing secret: it contains a small homesteaders house that is still maintained and staffed to educate visitors about homesteading life. And that small homesteaders house sells pies. Delicious, delicious pies.

I stopped in and grabbed a cherry pie and a drink, then sat at a table outside and watched the storm rumble closer. Yes, I wanted to get another hike in, but you can't rush pie. Sometimes you just have to sit outside and enjoy the amazing weather and look at your really great car against a really great landscape and consume a really great pie. That's just life, you know?

Well, it's mine, at least.

I finished my pie up and struck off towards the Cohab Canyon Trail, conveniently located right across the parking lot. The trail starts with a series of steep switchbacks, which is not necessarily a great thing when you are full of pie. But I persisted and made it up and into Cohab Canyon. 

Looking out from the trail

Right at the entrance to the canyon, I saw a really cool contact between the Chinle Fm and the Wingate SS. The ranger at the front desk told me that the blue-green tendrils are root traces, but I'm really not sure that they are - they look more like burrows to me in their size/shape. But they could be! Regardless, they sure do look cool.

I stepped into the canyon and immediately remembered it. Yep, I've been here before - back in 2014, when I visited with my parents. Oops! I was hoping to get some variety in with this visit, but oh well. I decided that I wanted to see the canyon again anyways, mostly because it is full of really interesting bedforms and cool eroded pockets and holes. Swiss cheese rocks!

See, I wasn't lying: these rocks are FULL of holes.

Another interesting feature of the canyon is a single hoodoo with a single bush growing on top of it. It's cool, to be sure, but not nearly as cool as the hundreds of goblin-like hoodoos that I saw yesterday, so I nearly hiked right past it without even noticing.

At the end of the canyon, the trail forks up to a couple of overlooks that allow hikers to view the leading edge of Capitol Reef for dozens of miles. It was from the top of one of those overlooks that I saw the storm sweeping in, thunder roaring, lightning cracking, wind whipping. And there I was, standing on one of the highest points of the Capitol Reef. I briefly wondered if the ranger who recommended this trail to me was trying to kill me.

I skedaddled down the trail very quickly, trying to get down into the canyon before I got zapped. Within the canyon, a steady rain came down. It's interesting - I should have been soaked, but I think that a lot of the water evaporated on its way down (or evaporated off of my skin and clothes) as I didn't end up nearly as wet as I thought I should be. One of the benefits of hanging out in the desert, I guess.

As I came out of the canyon and around the face of the cliff to make my way down the switchbacks, I got slammed with a huge wall of wind. I just love it when it rains sideways. It really ensures that I am evenly soaked in every direction, you know?

I was a little bedraggled by the time I reached Jane at the bottom of the trail, but hey, I'd consider the events of the day a success so far anyways. Pie goes a really, really long way towards making sure that my spirits stay high, no matter what happens. So sure, it was raining and I was soaked. But I had hiked two cool trails, seen a really beautiful scenic drive, and eaten a delicious pie. Clearly, my day could not be bad.

I did decide to take off and make my way further west, as the forecast showed that the rain was going to persist for the rest of the afternoon. Someday, I will have go to back to Capitol Reef (again) and hope for less rain and better hiking conditions. It really is an amazing park. But man, it just seems very prone to unpredictable storms.

The rest of the afternoon was uneventful as I hopped on Highway 50 and drove the rest of the way across Utah. The weather cleared right up and a steady stream of wind through Jane's window quickly dried my clothes, which I was thankful for.

The further west I drove, the flatter the scenery got, becoming very reminiscent of classic Nevada landscapes. Dramatic hills, mesas, and buttes gave way to more grassy plains dotted with the occasional hill, which seemed to always be somewhere off in the distance. And the further west I got, the more lonely the road began to feel. I don't mean lonely in a bad way - being alone is nice, sometimes. And it's not that the road or the landscape are empty - there are cars, sometimes, and there's certainly lots to look at on the side of the road. But it begins to feel like there is so much space in the world that you are surely insignificant, easily swallowed by the depths of the sky and the hypnotic rustling grasses of the rolling plains. It begins to feel like a place where you disappear. And that, I suppose, is why Highway 50 has been dubbed "America's Loneliest Road".

I had planned things such that I was still on the road when the Golden Hour hit, illuminating the fields in wide swathes of gold and draping soft shadows over the hills and depressions in the landscape. Highway 50 in the golden hour is almost otherworldly in its beauty and remoteness. It is a kind of breathtaking beauty that is impossible to capture on film, because to understand it and really feel it, you have to be there. 

That's a cliche thing to say, I know. Surely, with modern photography techniques, someone has to have been able to capture the essence of this road in a photo. But I would have a very hard time believing it. In a two-dimensional photo, it is impossible to render the pure vastness of the area, the feeling of almost too much air. You can't see all of the little details that really give you a sense of scale. You can't hear the whistling of the wind across the plains and the absence of all other noise, feel the shocking sense of stillness that runs counter to the grass that you can see rippling for miles and miles. It is the kind of place that seems so quiet that you think that if you strain hard, you could almost hear the sound of the clouds passing by overhead.

The most unusual thing, to me, is that you can feel all this, even while driving a loud, unrefined, angry little pony car. It's almost like the plains swallow some of the sound of the car until even that seems uncharacteristically quiet, muffled. Maybe they don't like to be disturbed.

And so, Jane and I roared soundlessly across the landscape, leaving no trace of our passing. 

At sunset, we pulled into Baker, NV, a town that only exists as a portal to Great Basin National Park. For us, it served as the only possible pit stop between Capitol Reef and Reno, so the small campsite I found was more than good enough. Tomorrow I'll drive the rest of the way across Nevada into Reno, where I will immerse myself in the cacophony of noise that is Hot August Nights. But until then, I will enjoy the silence.

Kelly signing out.