Reprinted from Epoca (Italy)
The last mapped American wilderness was the Canyonlands, a barren chunk of high desert in southeastern Utah. It was the last unexplored territory in the West when John Wesley Powell made his historic descent of the Colorado in 1867. Today, the Canyonlands are part national park, part proposed nuclear waste dump, and the rest unused Bureau of Land Management wasteland.
It is here five strangers and I are dropped–on top of a mesa–I have been asked not to say exactly where. It overlooks a hollow canyon laced with dry cactus, burnt sand and slickrock the color of bones. Ten days from now the bus will meet us on the other side of the basin–that is, if we make it down and around dozens of intervening gulches, some more than 1,000 feet deep.
Anticipation turns to anxiety at this base camp for Outward Bound. What they expect us to leave behind worries me most. The logistician issues backpacks, helmets, ropes, water jugs, foul-weather gear, sleeping bags and tarpaulins. The food, comprised mostly of flour, beans, and dried fruit, replicates Powell’s diet. But I see no tents and no radio transmitters for emergencies.
When we lay out our personal effects for inspection, they confiscate my deodorant, soap, half my clothes, and my entire stash of toilet paper. “These guys are extremists,” I mutter to Nabil, a New Jersey-raised NCAA wrestling champion who is reshuffling his modest pile of possessions. He hasn’t said a word since his cigarettes were taken away. Then, as if to avoid the subject, he says “Yeah, you should have heard my friends. They kept saying, ‘Ten days! How are you going to last 10 days without your beer?'” Later that day we hear about a woman who brought a set of gold-rimmed china, including a teacup and saucer, ebony-handled silverware and 126 cans of soda pop she fully intended to carry in her pack. Even with the pack pared down to the necessities, I still cannot get it more than a foot off the ground. Finally, I drag it to a nearby rock, stand it up, squirm in under the shoulder straps, and struggle to my feet. My legs wobble like a newborn antelope. I totter over toward the group for our first lecture.
Outward Bound’s philosophy, in one word, is simplicity. Trim off the frills and extract dependencies. Try to survive without your vices. Not everyone can–like the 32-year-old physical education teacher who woke up on the fifth day and walked off the course, or the fellow who couldn’t face perceived rejection and flung himself over a cliff. I was determined to stick it out.
Our instructor, David Berger, left civilization for the desert because he couldn’t stand walls, the concrete ones or the more confining cerebral ones. “What I like about the place,” says the former philosophy graduate student, “is the logical consequences.” In a classroom there are no consequences. If you don’t do well you get a D. Here, if you fall, you die. So it motivates.”
No one says much when we shoulder our packs and track off through the desert dust toward the edge of the canyon. None of us wants to open up, but then one by one we begin to talk. I say I don’t know what I am getting into, where I am headed, or exactly why I am even there. Phil, a fast-food restaurant entrepreneur, says he knew from the start. He is midway through a two-year vacation aimed at finding a new passion, career, hobby–perhaps himself. Nabil, who filled out his application a year earlier on a whim, now wonders why he had. Mary, having just ended her marriage and career breeding Tennessee walking horses, wants a break from the reins. Susan a Michigan banker, isn’t sure what she wants, but she hopes she’ll stumble into its arms. And Michael, who I am particularly glad to hear is an emergency room doctor, says he doesn’t need an excuse to be present.
Light vanishes from the rim of the mesa before we do, so we set up camp at its edge and divide responsibilities: shelter and cooking. I’m to be chef. Our Optimus IIB stoves work admirably when primed and lit properly, but will explode if one step is omitted. I carefully work on the little stove until it’s hissing at me properly, and I begin to boil water. It takes so long to pitch our tarps and cook the rice that we end up eating in the dark, illuminated by the eerie flicker of a single candle.
In the morning, David begins our lessons in this 100-mile-wide classroom, poking some apparently dead lichen in a pothole at his feet. He pours a few drops of his cold coffee onto the black mound, and chameleon-like, it turns brilliant green, sprouting tiny ferns within seconds. “That’s why we must be gentle out here,” David says. “It doesn’t take much to bring things to life–or death.” Then, he reaches over and extracts a piece of tissue from a nearby bush. “This is the reason we don’t use toilet paper. The wind and rain and animals eventually uncover everything left in the desert. And there are plenty of substitutes–natural ones that work better anyway.”
We pack up our gear and poof the site; that is, wipe out traces of our tracks with dead branches. Then we hike, crawl, skid, and inch our way down to the lip of a parched waterfall gully, an 80-foot drop-off, that David refers to as a “jump.” We will have to rappel to descend into the gully. The technique was developed by mountaineers, and requires ropes and specific knots so that the climber can descend easily. Three rappels and a day later we are committed to the canyon. Sheer walls on either side confine us to the gully where our “path” is paved with tractor-size boulders that occasionally roll. It would be impossible to ascend the overhangs from which we have rappelled, so our only course is down deeper into the canyon, toward the Colorado River. We are a day behind schedule and still moving at a glacial pace. Mary’s legs keep giving out on her. Nabil, who yesterday noticed his Pac-Man wristwatch was missing, sings “This ain’t no disco,” and Michael keeps mumbling about scotch on the rocks. Above us, the sky foreshadows trouble.
High cirrus clouds can mean a cold front moving in and possible rain, and David senses this. He has seen flash floods in the canyons. Walls of mud and water 10 feet high, studded with boulders and stumps, can snake down a canyon as quickly as a rattlesnake strikes, and without warning. “This is a poor place to be when it rains,” he says. We scramble in silence for nearly two hours. My legs scrape on the talus, the sun bakes my arms; every bone in my body screams at me I’m out of water and nearly out of my senses when David stops. “Okay, we’re safe,” he announces cheerily. I search for the sign. The sky is unchanged, the walls slightly higher and boulders mark our route for as far as I can see. He points to the symbol of our salvation: a cowpie. “Where cows can go we should be able to follow,” he says, and so we do. Around the next bend, we find water sprouting with whispy tamarisk. In the desert, water becomes elusive, almost mythical. It comes in teasing wisps and then vanishes through the sand or evaporates into the air. In the singeing heat, one can last a day without water, perhaps two, before the tongue swells and turns black. Then it’s just a matter of hours. Pockets of stagnant, trapped in slickrock pools attract attention for miles in every direction. Lizards, coyotes, snakes, scorpions, bighorn sheep, hawks, and we humans come to drink.
The path wanders across the canyon floor and out into a moonish basin and 100-foot-high stalagmites. By dusk, we have trekked halfway across this bowl. In a frantic rush to beat the darkness and the rain, we set up our packs in the barren plain and pull the tarp across for shelter. The sky decays into a black ocean and rain sheets toward the earth. Exhausted, I fall asleep.
An hour later, I’m awake coughing sand. The wind has torn down our tarp and the flapping edges lash us awake. Sand blows everywhere; gusts pepper my face and sandblast my nose. Eventually, my sinuses clog completely and I have to breathe through my mouth. I choke on the dusty grit, pulling the bandanna over my mouth to strain the air. What seems like 24 awful hours later, we drag ourselves out of our sleeping bags into the pre-dawn darkness and break camp.
Today, the group is to make its way to the next campsite with only our maps and our new navigational skills to help. David leaves us. By noon, we are lost. David has been shadowing us (out of our sight), and when he sees the situation is hopeless, he rejoins the group. He drills us again on contour lines, bench marks, orientation and declination. Now we have it; he send us off to find the pass that leads to the inner chasms of Canyonlands.
We descend the arroyos, down past million-year-old layers of crumbled rock, past coyote droppings, past bighorn tracks that crisscross our own. Down past Fremont Indian cliff dwellings with petroglyphs etched into the walls and pottery shards under foot. They’re left from the Pueblo period circa CE 1200, so we, too leave them. Down to the heart of the canyon where clear water bubbles from the rocks, where magic crackles in the air.
We lay our sleeping rolls under a ledge and watched the walls turn magenta in the alpenglow of the sun. We are at an impasse. No one wants to discuss it, so we pat out flour tortillas, fry them with beans, salsa, and cheese, and talk about food we miss. Finally, someone confronts the issue. Earlier that day while negotiating an eight-foot jump, Mary sprained an ankle, and it has become swollen and uselss. The possiblity of an evacuation haunts the discussion. Mary, crouched in a corner, candlelight dancing off the side of her face, is silent, eyes searching, “What would you like to do, Mary?” Until nnow Mary has been brave, keeping her feelings inside, but then they break through. With steamy tears drenching her face, she says softly, “I suppose it’s an option, but it’s my least favorite one.” Silently, we all know we cannot leave her.
In the morning, Phil carries Mary’s pack; she limps, and we ebb toward the Colorado River, which is somewhere far below, bucking its way toward Mexico. Once there, Mary soaks her ankle while we begin our solos. THe solo, meant to purge body and soul through abstinence, provides a 24-hour voluntary retreat. We go alone to solitary alcoves along the shore with only our sleeping bags. Minus the distraction of friends, books, food and noise, thoughts distill, separating like silt settling to the bottom of a still pool. Mental attitudes become clear, honest. I look inside myself and see anxiety tugging at contentment; I see self0doubt hampering achievement; I see sadness and sadness and strength; I feel like I have met someone I thought I knew well, but had never really stopped to talk to.
The following evening our patrol reunites with David, and shares a warm meal, fellowship and our latest self-discoveries. In the morning the sun ricochets off the rusty walls and filters through the sea-green tamarisk, lighting the pinon and juniper trees. I am overwhelmed by the sight–so simple, translucent, pure. We are camped at an oasis and transparent water surges over the red, blue and green river bed before it plunges over a 50-foot jump. I lie awake, listening, and when we leave I promise myself to return.
We follow the lazy creek to its mouth, the Colorado River. Off to one side–the bricked remains of an Indian dwelling that has been clinging to the red wall since before the common era.
Our route is blocked by the river on the west and a vertial wall to the east. Part of the Outward Bound experience is exposure to stress, calculated to bring a person into close contact with his feelings. Sahara desert explorer Geoffrey Moorhouse said, “I would use this journel to examine the basis of my fear, to observe in closest possible proximity how a human being copes with his most fundamental funk.” We are given an opportunity for such internal exploration: the wlal we choose, David sets upt he belay, or safety rope, and explains the rudements of climbing technique. We learn some new knots and ways to increase friction and decrease muscle tension. WIth such basics aside, David climbs easily to the top of the pitch to belay the rest of us up.
Nabil ties in and starts up. His first few moves are tentative, but steady. Having learned how to hang onto people in college wrestling, he seems to make the substitution from bodies o rocks easily enough, but halfway up, he’s stuck. He tries several alternate routes to no avail and finally announces, “You can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t quit the game.” But Nabil doesn’t want to quit the game. He continues working at it and eventually makes it to the top.
I go next. After three quick moves, I scan the rock for another hold. Just then, the entire slab I’m standing on gives way, crumbling into loose shale. I claw for handholds. Then footholds. Hanging on tentatively, growing tired and scared, I first plan and then move. Halfway up, I pause to look back down and vertigo takes over. The tree tops and the Colorado River, 500 feet below, start to spin. My leg begins to shake involuntarily and I hug the rock. Why, with my fear of heights, am I doing this? I can’t help it, I try to hold back, but tears come anyway. I can’t go up and I can’t go down and I’m wearing out just standing here. I feel around and can’t find a single niche for my foot. Finally, in desperation, I jam my fist into the crack above my head and pull up. My right leg touches on a ledge about the width of a poker chip. Sensing my losing odds, I ask David for help. He recommends some moves, but I can’t make them. It takes 45 minutes of clawing and pulling myself up before I crawl over the top and scramble back from the edge. Fear ebbs and I feel the sublime satisfaction, the joy of victory.
By this point in the course, we theoretically are to have developed sufficient wilderness savvy, canyon legs, orienteering skills, and group unity that we can be set loose on our own. David is not sure we’re ready–I’m convinced we are not–but we part anyway. He shoves the map at us, points to a nebulous spot where we are to meet two days later, and says, “OK? Fine. Bye.”
So we are off, alone somewhere in the middle of the great Utah wasteland with the promise of water at our next campites–if we can find it. By midday, after two debates over which way to go, our progress has slowed. I feel like quitting. Nabil, coming up from behind says, “You know, you have to bust ass and feel like shit to really live.”
“Well, I’m busting my ass,” I return, “and I feel like shit, and I’m ready to die.”
Just then, we stumble onto a cataract grotto. Tucked under a 20-foot-high sandstone overhang, the cave has a ceiling reaching up 10 feet high and a soft, phosphorescent green carpet of moss and lichens. Here in the heart of a crusty, wizened desert, an artesian well is the last thing one expects to find. As we drink from the cool water it slowly comes to me: The secrets, all the treasures of the desert, are hidden, intended only for those who struggle to find them.
We continue up a hill in silence, single file. Above the most spectacular scene our combined memories have ever witnessed awaits us. THe jagged skyline seems to be cut with pinking shears and to the north, massive buttes protrude fromt ehb road mesa. The landscape is in opaque black against the air-brushed sky and flaming orange horizon. The beauty is paralyzing. Michael stands for 20 minutes, hands in his pockets, staring. He turns slowly and says, “Kinda humbles you, doesn’t it?” Along the horizon the spire of sandstone glow like candles until the dark purple descends curtainlike, snuffing out the light; we are left in awe and in darkness.
Close to noon the following day, only a few miles from our final rendezvous, David meets us in a gully and asks how we did. He seems pleased with our progress, timing, and unity as a group. For the first time we are moving well, our navigating is direct and our pace is strong. Both David and we know that two weeks earllier we could not have mde it out of there; now, we are eager to finish the last short stretch.
The last day ends with a traditional “race to the finish”–in this case, the trailhead and a waiting bus. It’s 10 kilometers to the road and four-wheel drive takes our packs so we can run. As promised, our transportation back waits for us.
Ten days have ended and I am bruised inside and out, tired and dirty … but content. I’m happy to have learned what it means to be thirsty and without a drink; I’m happy to know how far a mile becomes at the end of 20, and how to treat the delicate earth. More importantly, I’ve discovered my perception of my limits and how to push them. I cam wanting only to learn how to live in the wilderness. I see I have received more than I came to take.
I give David a goodbye hug and he shispers in my ear, “Cheers. And for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone where you’ve been.”
