Crushed Expectations

Sunrise near Valley of the Gods in Mexican Hat, Utah

It’s basically a day like so many others before it: I wake before the sun nudges me from sleep, except on this occasion, my head rises alone for the last time before I get home later today and snuggle in next to the person I love. Carlos and I are bringing to an end our brief five-day excursion that took us to places new to him but mostly familiar to me.

One never knows what might be shared when traveling with a young person, nor does one go on adventures knowing what can be learned about oneself. I anticipated prior to our departure that I’d have my stamina challenged as this 20-year-old young man would have boundless energy, but here, at the cusp of 60 years old, I’ve found the exact opposite. My day started more than an hour ago; I’m showered, packed, and sitting in the dark writing as I’ve already learned to let him sleep because he can fall asleep at the breakfast table, in the car while chatting, listening to music, exploring an environment he’s never seen. Sunrises are not his thing.

We surprisingly leave Mexican Hat, Utah, before the sun has risen, one of the rare opportunities for Carlos to witness the phenomenon for himself, hopefully not the last. While there are rough ideas for how this day might progress, there’s nothing fixed aside from the certainty that we will be traveling south.

We’ll cross over the San Juan River and find the Valley of the Gods in sight before stopping to stare at the sun, looking for the best way to capture its image. I have my ideas of how to photograph our star, but Carlos is new to this experience, which will force him to practice this type of portraiture. As is typical with my method of travel, it’s not long before we are pulling over again for me to learn if I can see something with new eyes in a way that will allow me to bring an experience of the senses home with me I’d not previously encountered. It’s all an experiment, even if I’ve traveled this way a dozen or more times before.

Sunrise near Valley of the Gods in Mexican Hat, Utah

I know we have options regarding how this early part of the day might unfold, but as has been true the previous days, Carlos is along for the ride and has had no input regarding what comes next as this has all been an unfolding surprise of discovery for him.

If, from the title of today’s missive, you think I’m ending our journey on a negative note (Crushed Expectations could imply just that, couldn’t it?), you’d be wrong as the expectations Carlos entertained leading up to this adventure into unknowns proved wrong, well at least one important bit. You see, in order to allay his anticipated boredom due to the long haul across the featureless landscape, Carlos brought nearly a dozen books along with him. My thought was, who brings a dozen books on a road trip other than the person who fears not only becoming bored by the environment but one who becomes bored by the titles he’s attempting to read?

Monument Valley as seen from Utah

Instead, Carlos began falling into what it means to find the art to be seen in all things, and if he’s fortunate, he might discover the love to be found there, too. Like most young Americans brought up on a diet of instant gratification found in being over-stimulated by addictive media that dismiss that which is not consumed through a screen or intense human-created experiences, Carlos wasn’t prepared for the enchantment that awaited him by exploring immense space.

Monument Valley as seen from Utah

But here we are in the resonating throws of an experience that has unfolded in ways unexpected to the mind and imagination of a young man who now wants to continue the journey. By now, I’ve shared one of the secrets that have served Caroline and me so well: from the experiences you love, leave something undone so it will be the thing that draws you back. For Carlos, that draw was a hoped-for visit to the Grand Canyon, but our diversion and distractions that are allowed to happen will slice into the time that might have otherwise been available for a quick visit.

Carlos Guerrero entering Arizona from Utah

The loop is closing, though I hope the road ahead for Carlos will be a divergent one where he’s able to find a path of his own making instead of stumbling into the ruts etched by others following routines that rarely, if ever, change.

Winter on the Navajo Reservation north of Kayenta, Arizona

One cannot always simply go forward; we must yield to impasses, even if we created them ourselves. The road does not go on forever; you have to choose which way you will turn, though crashing into the wall ahead is also an option often chosen.

Winter on the Navajo Reservation north of Kayenta, Arizona

And if you can’t see everything ahead of you, that’s okay; perspective shifts and surprises work to enhance what will have been gained after finding the flexibility and adaptability to work within your situation.

Blue Coffee Pot restaurant in Kayenta, Arizona

To many, maybe a stop at a roadside diner is just another place for a meal, but for me, finding the Blue Coffee Pot Restaurant in Kayenta, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation open is a treasure. Carlos hadn’t noticed that initially, we were the only two non-Navajo customers in the joint; others passing through town are more likely to stop at the next-door McDonald’s or Burger King as those are the brands they know. Caroline and I have already visited this small restaurant and know that it’s not anything special, but we delight in the knowledge that our money will more directly support the Navajo community instead of some already wealthy executives in faraway Chicago, Illinois.

So, we take up a table, are brought coffee, and await our meal from but a few choices. Normally, I might have dug into writing so I’d have notes allowing me to add granular details to a trip, but over the course of these days, I’ve used my writing time as talking time to iterate and reiterate thoughts and ideas I believe worthy for a young person to at least hear once or twice before finding them at some future date. I’m a bit relentless in pressing these lessons into the ears of Carlos, who doesn’t seem bothered at all by the constant barrage. And so we talk, even at the expense of my breakfast cooling off instead of being eaten.

Comic of John Wise by Morgan Navarro from Grenoble, France

And then breakfast will grow colder as I watch a man wearing headphones enter the restaurant holding a mic in a windscreen and circle the place. It turns out that his name is Jack, and he’s traveling with his friend Morgan; the two Frenchmen are on a pilgrimage to document the path of Hunter S. Thompson, and after getting Jack’s attention, the two of us talk. This traveling journalist/podcaster half-wondered, half-asked, “Why has America seemingly failed to find inspiration from Hunter S. Thompson, and what are my tips for their next destination of Las Vegas?”

I have a tickle in my throat due to all of my talking, and realize that people I enjoy talking to likely believe I talk like this all the time. Little do they understand that there are few people I like talking to, and that’s why I find myself so often before the screen typing, writing in a notebook, reading, or walking around looking at my world and spending time in my own inner dialog. The majority of people which whom I start a conversation only last about 5 to 10 minutes before eyes start rolling, hands fidget, and their body language is a subtle contortion of squirming. When I run into someone with the tiniest spark of curiosity, and I have their attention, I try to dump a sense of passion for knowledge and discovery into them without overwhelming the person or losing them in intertwined examples they typically easily lose track of what thread I’m adding to the tapestry I’m attempting to weave.

Navajo Reservation south of Kayenta, Arizona

This metaphor of creating a cloth is hopefully an apt one because in weaving, complexity and a lot of preparation precede the outcome; similarly, the listener might be confused about the relationship of elements in a conversation being laid down; they cannot yet detect the pattern or value of the way things will be woven into their own experience. We, humans, are often not accustomed to listening to complexities of relationships between unfamiliar ideas and thoughts, finding it difficult to mix them into our own understanding, but this is essentially what the observer witnesses as the weaver throws the weft over the warp, we are not seeing the entire picture or finished form.

Graffiti on the Navajo Reservation in Shonto, Arizona

As the storyteller, I try my best to unravel the image drawn from my experience in a way that makes sense to the listener or reader, but this a fragment spun out of the impossibility of always finding a perfect coherence just as nobody has ever found the perfect alignment of musical notes that create the greatest melody which becomes the definitive song of all time and destroys the need for any new music after this discovery. Nope, we continue throwing contrasting notes into a melange of songs as people enjoy the variety. Sadly, the same cannot be said for stories, especially particularly difficult and possibly obtuse ones.

Graffiti on the Navajo Reservation in Shonto, Arizona

Our vocabulary and experience limit our ability to see beyond the immediacy of self, and through eroding attention spans, we have evolved narratives that have shrunk in much the same manner as moving from Victorian undergarments to g-strings in little more than a generation or two. So now we are left with a society communicating using monosyllabic language that accompanies an equally narrow comprehension. If this brevity is sufficient for operating daily life, then why not apply it to the interpretation of viewing the entirety of what lies ahead? The answer to this is that brevity and simplicity are inadequate for finding knowledge buried in the magnitude of what is before us.

Cow Springs, Arizona

There’s no bridging the chasm from an old-fashioned set of underwear (thoughts) to the other side of the abyss using a g-string (memes). I believe that a comparison could be made by suggesting that Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, comprising four parts lasting 30 to 40 minutes, could be reduced to one note, although in some way, it can be reduced to just the first four. Of the rest of the piece, I suppose it could be claimed that if you heard it once, why does one need to hear it again? Could the answer be found in the fact that humans learn very little to nothing after a single iteration of new information arriving to their senses?

Cow Springs Trading Post in Cow Springs, Arizona

So, we go out to find, see, listen, and hear those things in life we are unfamiliar with, which is precisely what I’m attempting to share with Carlos. When one stops at a friend’s home and listens to a person playing the 5th symphony on piano, they have no real idea of the piece’s complexity if it were being played by a symphony. In our current age, we don’t care. We have the 15-second loop of Beethoven that accompanies the TikTok video with a witty phrase typed over it, and we believe we’ve gained the kind of deep knowledge that has served the sages over millennia. We are whole, we are complete, and we can now face the world with certainty that what was needed to forge a way ahead has been acquired. This is grotesquely untrue; we only thrive when knowledge and wisdom reach deeper into our souls.

Elephant Feet in Tonalea, Arizona

Mind you; this perception is not due to observations made regarding the person I’m traveling with; on the contrary, he’s quite curious, which is also the only reason we went out to share five days of being immersed in what for him are mostly new experiences. It’s precisely his willingness to look, listen, read, and wonder that allowed a basic foundation to be established where I felt that if I took the horse to water, it might likely drink. He supplied the seed, and I provided the sunlight and water.

John_Carlos_Roadtrip

This was the route of our 1,300-mile adventure.

Through the Portal

Jean Pierre Bakery in Durango, Colorado

Get in, get out. Go somewhere to get nowhere. Travel through the space that exists between you and places you’ve never been. Open the door to your cobweb-cluttered mind, welcoming a fresh breeze to disturb the mess within. Try to leave behind the nonsense you’ve been burdened with by expectations that are impossible to satisfy. Then, sit down to a meal of crispy hot knowledge where the shadows of ignorance will come under threat. When we embark on passing into new experiences where nothing is defined, we will likely find ourselves dining alone on the bitter diet of alienation, as who in their right mind would subject themself to introspection and uncertainty after finding cocksurety in the arrogance of all-knowing stupidity?

Southwest Colorado in Winter

We’ve been traveling in a counter-clockwise direction to unwind the spring that is designed to take us forward into expectations. Time is reversing to deny us our orientation with certainty. We revert to a previous mind, the one we carried as children when everything was still new. We are failing to respect convention and custom as we choose to find a new path; I am experiencing familiarity while Carlos travels into a multi-sensorial universe inconceivable just 72 hours earlier. We end up writing and rewriting our internal mappings that drive an operating system running on an auto-pilot setting that helps direct what our future narratives will borrow in order to take form. All the while, the inclination is to believe we are simply following a road that will bring us to something known.

Approaching Utah from Colorado

How could anyone have known the day would start in an authentic French bakery in a mountain town, followed by a slow drive through a snowy environment before being dumped back out in the arid desert? While you might think that, as the planner of this adventure, I would be in possession of that knowledge, the reality is that I considered roads to places separated by reasonable driving distances and then let the pieces fall into place. At any juncture along the way, we may have needed to deviate from the route due to weather, an accident, or even incompatibility between two forces of life that, in an instant found themselves living 24/7 side-by-side.

Carlos Guerrero at Utah State Line

Time to put Colorado behind us for a quick dash to Mexican Hat, Utah, where I hope we can check in early to our motel, dump our bags, and race over to the Navajo Welcome Center at Monument Valley. We have an appointment for 12:30 to meet up with Cody for a guided tour out on the Mystery Valley Trail. This is the reason there are but a few photos representing the first half of the day, though we passed dozens of beautiful snowy landscapes I would have loved to photograph. Believe it or not, this trip has nothing to do with my photography or what I might be looking for; it’s really about what Carlos might discover along the way. This was also a pivotal moment for him. Yesterday, before confirming today’s adventure, I asked him if he was able or willing to pony up his share of the cost for the hike I had in mind. It’s not every day we are confronted with a per-person cost of $180 to be brought into an environment where a good amount of time would be spent walking around through a desert landscape. Strangely enough, he opted to see what the pricey journey might entail.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

We are only slightly southwest of Monument Valley but simultaneously a world away in a place rather isolated. Tire tracks are common, although the sight of the vehicles that left have them will be hard to come by, so we take in the shadows as they stretch over the landscape and will have to imagine the footprints of those Iceage Paleo-Indian hunters that are said to have roamed here starting some 14,000 years before Europeans arrived. As for the shadows, they arrived with the return of the rising sun.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

The Grand Canyon sees about 12,400 visitors a day, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park sees about 38,600 visitors per day. In this photo we are seeing absolutely nobody, and, should it stay this way, there will be no sad visitors to Mystery Valley today.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Spoke too soon; here we see John Wayne because John Wayne is always near.

Carlos Guerrero at Mystery Valley in Arizona

In the 192 million years of Monument Valley’s history and with two people standing at this particular point on earth, this is the first time ever that photos were taken of one another. This will never be duplicated due to the impossibility of seeing the exact type and quality of lighting and sky that was rapidly changing here today or even knowing just where it was we were standing.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

On any given day, one might be looking at this scene and, on the very next day, believe they are looking at the same thing, but superposition says this isn’t exactly true. From one day to the next, something changed: a plant grew, grains of sand were blown about, a lizard shifted a thing unseen, and so while the unchanged part is seen, so are the changes though our ability to recall find details might not readily pick up on those differences. You, too, are in a superposition of yourself because you may not perceive how you changed from one day to the next; in the mirror, you will be gazing upon the two versions of yourself, the one that existed yesterday and this new one that gathered something different and has likely changed your trajectory and perception.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

When we are out in unfamiliar places, we are processing a world of differences as we read and learn about the environment. We are, in effect, taking steroids and building muscles, but while our brain becomes swole with the strength of this kind of exercise, we cannot see the bulging pecs of a mind taking on greater definition, and so we discount the value of these experiences.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Play a videogame, and over time, a person will develop skills that allow the battles and puzzle solving to become easier, but what does one improve upon in their mindscape when considering a tree growing in a bowl of swirly sandstone? What skills are honed or strengths achieved when observing the world around us as an aesthetic body that might be embued with ideas of beauty?

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Prior to the arrival of the Navajo, the Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) roamed these lands. I grew up with the ugly manufactured idea that arose out of the Rousseauian concept of the Noble Savage, where white ethnographers romanticized the idea that the Anasazi simply disappeared as a kind of phenomenon. Creating a mystery is more exciting for the imagination than dealing with truths that point to marginalized people forced onto reservations and stripped of their ways of life. In many cases, their children were stolen to ensure they took on the attributes of the dominant culture, though they would never actually become part of that. With a fantasy created, the white inhabitants could reasonably claim that they weren’t corraling authentic people with real history. Those natives were now extinct, and the ones being forced into capitulation were savages intent on destroying opportunities for whites while also threatening our womenfolk. The people who lived on these lands a millennia ago were Ancestral Puebloans who continue to live spread out across the Four Corners Region of the Southwest.

Carlos Guerrero at Mystery Valley in Arizona

Being out here with Cody leading us through these red rocks is amazing in its own right, but I would love the opportunity to camp here for a number of days, leaving the truck behind while we simply walk about, sit for a while, watch and listen to the coming and going of night and day. The reality of our time here is one of a financial equation, a man gets paid so he can continue to exist on land he may have inherited, but the dictates of the modern economy have conditioned him to understand that money equals food and freedom, and if one only has enough for food, his freedom is effectively damned and time made precious and rare.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

The dominant culture of the United States might claim that Americans exist in an egalitarian society, but that’s nothing more than bald-faced lies, similar to those told to people surviving in the straights of poverty by a bourgeoisie protecting the wealth they are afraid could slip away. What happens when not only your inner wealth slips away, but your cultural wealth is torn from the group, and you are left with mythologies that don’t pay for a sack of flour and a hunk of meat? You despair and foment hate with a dose of resentment, or at least I would. I wonder how Americans would feel about their homes being taken in a big roundup while simultaneously forced to acknowledge that Jesus no longer exists and that they’ll be prosecuted and reeducated should they continue to hold on to such primitivism?

Mystery Valley, Arizona

The ironic thing is that the imagination and intellect of the lower socio-economic 2/3rds of the U.S. population have essentially had just that happen to them as they have been stripped of an education that would serve them well in an age of rapidly ascending technology they barely comprehend. Their overlords are creating a complexity using a technological language that relegates this majority to being that of savages and not particularly romanticizable savages. It is as though the modern American masses are becoming an indecipherable bit of rock art that reflects an ancient society lost in time. Humanity is being lost.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

People from between 700 and 2,000 years ago made this pottery, and as it lost its utility, it was left here. When the people of today die, they will leave behind nothing they created with their own hands; they will leave trash, while the memories they gathered from their participation in a media-driven society will leave no signs. Fortunately, these beautiful pieces of pottery that act as reminders of those who came before have so far survived the intrusion of outsiders who sadly, would pay upwards of $1000 for a piece of jewelry made with some of these fragments. We would steal the historical reflections of these ancestors in order to feed our ego and guts, caring not one bit about whose heritage we erase.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

This is a reminder to the future generations that would walk in the Ancestral Puebloan’s footsteps that others learned how to survive here. It is an important history lesson and a challenge for those who follow to learn how to live with less.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

I can’t really say I’ve seen a lot of pottery shards in my lifetime, but I’ve likely seen more than most. This, though, is the first time I’ve seen a piece with a small hole carved into it that I’m going to make the semi-educated guess was there in order to make carrying the vessel a bit easier by using a bit of leather or maybe a twined rope made of yucca. Should you ever find your way out in Mystery Valley, maybe you’ll spot this piece, too, as it’s still lying right where we found it.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

This was home to at least a small handful of Ancestral Puebloans many hundreds of years ago. It was certainly not a dwelling the Navajo would have lived in as their pre-Western contact homes were hogans and sweat houses (sweat lodges) known in Navajo as k’eet’soo’ii.

Carlos Guerrero at Mystery Valley in Arizona

While I was scoping photography opportunities and contemplating silence, Carlos responded to the opportunity of climbing up the cliff face and carefully crawled through the narrow entryway into the long-abandoned cliff dwelling. While I would love to experience the view from above and within, my fear of heights combined with the steep exposure stymied me yet again; well, we can’t do everything, can we?

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Somewhere along the trail, Carlos points out how this is possibly the first time he’s been somewhere so absent of others. This wasn’t a lament; it felt enthusiastic that he should be having such an experience and seeing the world with the eyes of real surprise that might redefine the way he relates to the idea of what a desert is.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Cherish these moments, Carlos, as over the past 25 years, Caroline and I have found these isolated situations are becoming rarer. The luxury of being in the quiet, open spaces where beauty can be found is disappearing, in large part due to social media and the #doitforthegram crowd. Once Instagram and its influencers take away some of the appeals of pristine places such as what’s happening to Iceland, Pedra do Telégrafo, the Cliffs of Moher, Macchu Picchu, and the Hooker Valley Track, aspiring influencers looking for fame and fortune must discover their own places that will inspire others to be cool like them.

Many Hands Ruin in Mystery Valley, Arizona

To stand here in silence and solitude with no one else present offers the visitor a moment to capture a sense of place taken out of a time prior to the advent of the camera and crowds. We are at The House of Many Hands.

Many Hands Ruin in Mystery Valley, Arizona

A picture is worth a thousand words, except when it’s not. There are four human-looking pictographs on this panel along with more than a few handprints, but I have no facility to decipher them but maybe I don’t really need to. Is it only my desire to solve the mystery that I want to imbue the figures with special meaning, as I think they may contain secrets that were meaningful to the Ancestral Puebloans? What if they were simply art for art’s sake?

Many Hands Ruin in Mystery Valley, Arizona

Hands that touch, hands that hold, hands that love. Hands that write, hands that draw, hands that paint. Hands that steer, hands that give, hands that take.

Mystery Valley, Arizona

Eyes that take, eyes that translate, eyes that wish to never forget.

Chimney Arch at Mystery Valley, Arizona

If a hole in the fabric of reality were able to be opened, would you be afraid to look within? If a gateway into knowledge were to be found in a book, would you read it? If a passageway into your soul was to be discovered in love, would you make the effort to throw off your indifference?

Tear Drop Arch near Gouldings in Monument Valley, Arizona

Everything hangs in the balance between potential and oblivion. The opportunity to gaze through Teardrop Arch near Gouldings Lodge can only happen because one makes oneself available to be here; this is the potential of our senses to find change. A small mound of the earth will someday give way and topple this 200 million-year-old rock perched above it, thus continuing the work of the past 25 million years in shaping Monument Valley. Right here, which was part of my right now while standing here on this late afternoon, I moved my perspective to be witness to a second carved out of a vast history where I’ll blip in and out of existence in the relative blink of an eye. We are afforded this rare opportunity to look through history while history has no interest in looking through us. Will you opt to be present to experience at least some of life with your own eyes, hands, and ears, or is the oblivion of crumbling under the force of time never to have been anywhere good enough for you?

Sunset in Monument Valley, Arizona

Before you know it, another day is gone, another week, month, year, and a life you held dear. That one chance you had to be available for your own life and the lives of others will have slipped by; history will forget you and those who once loved you will also accede to the demands of time, thus erasing your presence like so many clouds capturing the final rays of a setting sun letting go of the intense beauty they inspired upon an observer who happened to be at the right place at the right time to experience such a thing before our star dipped below the horizon.

Freedom and Independence on the 4th of July

Independence Day out in a space that allows an extraordinary amount of freedom and independence to be had; that’s where we are. Nothing consumed, not a lot desired, and very little purchased is how we travel into this day, which in some way mirrors our lives at home. We comfortably find ourselves in a vast landscape, trying to interpret a horizon without easy markers or signs to guide us into the unfamiliar, and that’s okay.

Is Independence Day still a celebration of our freedom from tyranny or simply the faint recollection of historic events that paved the way for some idealistic notions? Certain declarations and amendments have come to stand in for whatever the thoughts might have been surrounding a collective sense of being free Americans, but are two or three fragments the extent of what independence means? Why do so many find our constitutional declarations ensconced in law to be tenuous at best and in need of constant anxious lament as though at any moment they will be ripped from the clutch of patriots who apparently are the only truly aware Americans? I’m afraid that this nervous energy and a constant refrain that everything America stands for is on the brink of being torn away is a toxic salve bringing infection to a wound exploited by hyperbolic political shysters, modern-day media snake oil salesmen, and pundit quacks who are not expert in anything other than terror.

People stuck in paradigms of the past appear most susceptible to fear and deception that exploits their unenlightened minds. Maybe they are broken and undereducated due to an indoctrination that made them slaves to a jingoistic and overzealous dogma from which they are now unable to break free. How, then, are those people free or independent? They are not; they are like this broken-down, rusting jalopy that is not going anywhere. Put a TV in front of this car, and you are effectively seeing many of my fellow citizens: frozen by gravity, useless, a relic from a past that failed to maintain any kind of momentum that might have allowed them to glide into the present and hopefully the future too.

I should offer up some details regarding this day that actually pertains to our trip from Utah that will take us home to Phoenix, Arizona, today. We woke in Blanding, a small town with a population of just under 3,600 people, and headed south. The sandstone bluff in the second photo is at the edge of the town of Bluff that we visited at the end of May; the car at the Cow Canyon Trading Post is also in Bluff. This wall fragment was at one time either part of a dwelling or maybe a storage area. I spotted it from the road, and it begged us to pay a visit. From here, we traveled toward Montezuma Creek and Aneth on our way to a special crossroads in the middle of nowhere.

Nowhere is where I live my best life, where nothing I own is strewn before or around me. All I can do is look upon the nothingness that embodies everything and has an intrinsic value exceeding the things that might be considered mine. When this wash is running it feeds into the San Juan River, which is the green spot out in the distance of this photo. For countless years, the rains have come and gone and, on occasion, left enough moisture that the streambed carved itself into the landscape. On this particular day, its path is evidenced by the green S curve starting in the foreground. The hand of nature out here has been employing the engineering forces of natural processes to build the most elegant of places that I will ever witness while standing at this particular place on State Route 162 located in San Juan County, Utah. So, now I’ve been everywhere and seen everything where nothing existed until I embued it with all the appreciation and value of someone able to find things meaningful while exploring the freedom of independence to do such things.

We had to stop here in Montezuma Creek, Utah, to admire the artwork of the students at Whitehorse High School who, when not exploring their creativity, are locked in classrooms being indoctrinated into believing that what they are being forced to learn will deliver them from the wretched poverty in which many of their parents exist. The cruel dichotomy here is that these kids are learning just enough to have them either conform or fail and likely relinquish themselves to systems that will exploit their incarceration. Without hope of further real education, they will languish in meager subsistence jobs not far from where they are growing up and never know the freedom of independence that the United States claims is a key part of our cultural DNA. Native Americans, like many minorities that can’t afford participation, are tossed by the wayside of something less than nothing, a place without hope or the ability to interpret what riches they might have if they were seriously knowledgable about truths. These truths are simply the idea that freedom is a state of mind afforded by removing oneself from the struggle of just surviving abject poverty, and this is where real education comes to bear.

I need to make clear here that my focus is not lamenting the situation of the poor, minorities, or other disadvantaged groups; the system is stacked against them, and they do what they can with the little they have. My real complaint is about those who have the means to be free and independent but are simultaneously deeply entrenched in their intellectual stagnation and being the loudest about their fear of what they claim is being stolen from them, which is absolutely nothing.

We cannot contain the ocean, the sun, or the wind, and we are fairly adept at controlling the river, bringing light to darkness, and giving ourselves the ability to move quickly over the surface of the planet, but we are absolute masters of bringing totalitarian enslavement upon the minds of the masses who are terrified to lose their shelter, sustenance, and social standing in a broken community of lonely souls drunk on the desire for out-of-reach riches that never offered real happiness to anyone in the first place. Love is the water that is supposed to flow down the river of life and through our communities, but we’ve created a drought by selling false dreams to people who will likely never know better and must endure the suffering of unfulfilled lives while we who have it all always get more. For us, the river is a deluge that welcomes us to grow more, secret away these precious resources so they may always be there for us; all the while, we pity those who supposedly won’t help themselves as we are oblivious to how systems are stacked against the ill-educated.

Aneth, Utah, is indicative of the disappearance of hope and opportunity, a place where the freedom to survive on ancestral lands is bulldozed by the allure of a fake image of life delivered by TV, the internet, and video games. In the past 20 years, Aneth has seen its population shrink by 139 people, and while that may not sound significant, consider that this means the town went from 598 people down to 459 for a loss of 1 in 4 Anethians. This is obviously a tragic situation for the local Navajo population since a town that is disappearing from the map has to support an elementary school that pays its senior teachers $80,000 a year and is apparently only working to catapult their children to places elsewhere.

With the intrusion of sham dreams of wild success that can be easily had in America’s big cities, the traditions of a community are shattered as fresh transplants crash into the cold reality of life in the uncaring environment of the metropolis. The broken young souls either fall to the wayside or return to the old town, contributing to its decay and their own dissatisfaction. This is not independence or freedom; it is planned disenfranchisement, obsolescence, cultural obliteration, and oppression. Aneth represents just 1 of 110 Navajo communities that are likely in similar predicaments. Now consider that by land area, the Navajo Nation is as large as the Netherlands and Belgium combined, but the GDPs of these two countries add up to almost $1.5 trillion compared to just $12.8 billion of economic activity on the largest Indian reservation in the United States; this is not an accident.

Sure, this is a poor comparison when one thinks that in Belgium and the Netherlands, the combined population is 29 million people strong in contrast to the Navajo Nation’s anemic 173,000 people, but in a country like the United States that has intentionally worked to disadvantage Native Americans, one might think we as a country could do better to honor those who have paid so much by suffering near total annihilation. Stop a moment and think of this: in Texas, 3.3 million people receive state aid, and nearly 2.8 million in Florida do too. Are we really a country of people who love independence and freedom that helps foster healthy communities and citizens, or are we a bunch of gun-loving nutjob individualists afraid of a tyrannical boogeyman created by marginalized megalomaniacs who become wealthy on this dissatisfaction, thus monopolizing another part of people’s vulnerability?

So, let’s all just look out on the horizon and refuse to see what we don’t want to see anyway. We are, after all, free to do exactly just what we want to do, even at the expense of sustaining a thriving nation. At one time, we were a union, not only that, we were trying to form a perfect union in order to establish our nation of the United States. Today, we are millions of individuals oblivious to our real role as neighbors willing to defend each other, help one another, and stand together. But the blue skies of optimism have been clouded over not exclusively by those in power but by all of us, the “We the people” part of all of us, because we are no longer we. This is a country of us and them. So on this 4th of July, which should be a joyous moment recognizing the accomplishments of a great country, we should bow down in respect of a dream that is dissipating like so many thin clouds on a hot day.

But that is not the America Caroline and I choose to live in. Our America is one of dreams and ideals where we’ve carved out just enough and seized the opportunity to find our way into a dream, though I’m not sure it resembles the idea of the bigger American Dream. You see, we are selfish, greedy, and maybe a bit isolated. We are selfish because we no longer buy into needing things like large homes, expensive cars, a vast wardrobe, or the other trappings of conspicuous consumption. We are greedy as we save money, predominately cook at home, set our thermostat higher, and save from not participating with subscriptions to frivolous services. We are isolated due to being avid readers, not owning a television, not playing golf, or rooting for sports franchises of any sort.

We’ve chosen our own path that recognizes our limitations to earn more and more. We’ve seen that those with more of all and nearly everything are rarely living profound and joyful lives. We understand that a chance encounter with someone less fortunate will likely offer us a more meaningful experience than listening to someone feeding us details about some celebrity, indignation regarding a politician of any persuasion, or their latest acquisition they believe enhances their position in the hierarchy of accomplishments.

We stand mostly alone with our ideals carrying dreams from a bygone era that if you ventured out into your country and into yourself, you might find experiential riches that would define you as a real explorer, a real American, a person living a life well lived. We still adhere to these ideas towering overhead as aspirations that are meant to be embraced. Caroline just recently became an American citizen and did so with tears in her eyes as she knows firsthand what is possible, but sadly, it is only because we had to separate ourselves from the masses defined by a lot of nothing, masses who don’t know the real American Dream and are angry that they are living in dystopian nightmares of their own creation.

Just stop a second and look at this: we are living the adage extolled in the Declaration of Independence regarding Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. We are free under our current system to find just those things; nobody is trying to take anything from us, but we must be willing to give to ourselves and adapt to a changing world. Our founding fathers never envisioned a day when people would travel at 60 mph over land in air-conditioned vehicles, take photos of exquisite detail, and call ahead to a restaurant in the middle of a desert to verify their hours, but that’s what we do, and all that’s required is to continue changing with the times.

These bags of flour will not make themselves into a cake, bagels, or the Navajo frybread it is likely destined to become. Someone else will have to transform it; the flour will be altered by the addition of other ingredients, be they savory or sweet; the point is that these constituent parts will see their chemistry changed but still won’t be done until they find their way into a transitional form of having been cooked. And though the flour and that which was added will become food, it will then need to be consumed to act as nourishment. Maybe a grandmother made a cake, a dad made his kids pancakes on a Sunday morning, or a husband and wife are making frybread next to the road and loading it with roast mutton for passersby, such as my wife and me. This act of change and preparation is what will sustain those who benefit from the efforts of a community. This parable is what a nation, a people, a country of united souls does for one another, but we’ve lost sight of the basic ingredients right in front of us. Instead, we are pissed off when we must deal with the investment of effort to transform things on our own because the 20-layer cake isn’t being spoon-fed to us when we want it.

Do not be a petulant bulwark against your own motion forward, happiness, or accomplishment. Nothing is really standing in your way besides yourself. Your intransigence to see your way around minor obstacles blinds you and steals your vision to find what is just beyond the rock called self. Caroline and I are not perfect examples of growing beyond limitations, but in these moments of exploring our own freedom and independence, we get to take sight of the astonishing vistas of our vast country and consider how fortunate we are to have broken free of the shackles of unattainable lives of perfection sold by those snake oil salesmen, quacks, charlatans, con artists, and cheaters who have sold far too many Americans nothing but anguish by blaming others for what they are missing.

Nothing has been stolen from you aside from what you gave away. If you look into the window of the TV screen and witness the magic of incredible perfection, maybe you are already selling yourself on self-delusion. The horizon is not painted in gold, but it is embued with riches of wonder if you know how to see what you were never told was valuable. America is the dream; our freedom to venture into ourselves has never been denied, but the fortitude of the pioneer requires us to surmount obstacles, and in a modern age, that means we must clamber over our own ignorance and fear of failure.

Initially, the road may not be paved, and we might struggle to determine the direction we need to take if there is no one to guide us; such is the task of the relentless fighter intent on carving a way forward. When the destination is not obvious, we are presented with our own wherewithal to make decisions and choices that might harm us as well as deliver us.

It’s bumpy out here, and what if you can’t easily find what sustains you? You keep going forward and shut up, as being a stoic is at the heart of being American. If you believe you deserve to be called a citizen of the United States, a real American, you push forward against the odds that will feel stacked against you, but in this age, it is no longer the brute force of strength that will propel you, it is what you’ve fed your mind, your education, and the opportunity you must work hard at to empower you. The easy way is for losers, they stay behind and wait for others to pave a trail instead of making the arduous journey themselves. We do not choose to stay at home watching the game, firing up the barbecue, or tossing back a beer today; we venture out to explore unknown spaces and risk learning about something that may not be initially obvious as to what value it gave us. Still, we seize the moment and embrace our radical freedom to be everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere.

Ah, the proverbial cake is served in the form of a roast mutton sandwich on frybread. We have pulled into Chinle, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, and it is here at an anonymous dirt lot where it might not be apparent to those driving by that a loose grouping of trucks and a few trailers is actually a small flea market. Hoping I’d get lucky to find what my deepest desires want right now, I creep over the bumpy lot, slowly driving past tables and vehicles until my eye caught a truck and trailer looking like they were offering hot food. While Caroline grabs the last dish of roast mutton deluxe with corn on the cob, potato, and green chili (which I’ll help myself to), I opt for the roast mutton sans frybread (it’s a diabetes thing) and am now being delivered to a state of sheepy nirvana.

What wasn’t at the market but was found in the parking lot of a gas station was a husband and wife selling pickle dillies, which we’ve also seen offered as picadillies. Salty, sour, and sweet isn’t everyone’s cup of yummy, but my wife isn’t everyone, so the idea of having a snowcone of tiger’s blood, banana, and black cherry syrup with layers of pickles is the perfect summer treat for her. As for me, yeah, that diabetes thing again. I’ll hold out for the possibility I might find more roast mutton further down the road. If you don’t try what you don’t know, you’ll never know what you didn’t know, and you’ll only have yourself to blame for a life not lived well.

Freedom and independence are choices in a land where they are guaranteed, but you’ll have to muster some resolve to risk your sense of certainty and put away your biases. Are your mind and imagination open like the sky on a summer day, or are you locked in the dungeon of hate and resentment that others are living the life you believe you deserve yet are unable to budge from your obstinacy to grab? I’d like to reiterate that Caroline and I are not special; we are simply willing to go out, look, savor, and participate in things that are not a normal part of our routine. We give ourselves permission to step out of our comfort zone, and yet we keep finding great comfort in discovering something new and exciting where others might find nothing.

I need to stop a moment and consider things I don’t know, such as the thoughts that might arise here at the Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site. This building is here because 158 years ago, the people of the Navajo Nation were force-marched over 300 miles from their native lands to a small reservation in eastern New Mexico. This act of human cruelty left deep scars on the Diné (Navajo), and why wouldn’t it? Forces representing the United States, along with disease and famine, killed more than a quarter of their population. So I can’t tell you how I might see the world and my opportunity in it if I came from an oppressed people. Regarding this trading post, it’s here because after the Long Walk, as the forced march is known, and the people returned to this land, trading posts were opened across the Navajo Nation as the U.S. government tried to support the Navajo in getting back on their feet.

This idea of trauma hindering the ability to move lives forward is obviously a touchy one that various ethnic and religious groups have had to contend with throughout time, but I can’t help but take inspiration from Jewish people, especially those who survived World War II. Roughly 33% of the global population of Jews died between 1933 and 1945 at the hands of the Nazis while their history of persecution for centuries prior is well known, and so their resilience to bounce back following the 2nd world war is nothing short of admirable. Tenacity to get past adversity seems to pay dividends, and while not all people are alike, there’s a lesson to be learned from not only people of the Jewish faith but maybe the Mormons, too. But I’m not here to dissect the minutiae of persecuted and oppressed people or to bring into context the barbarity of various societies over the course of history; I’m more interested in the valuable lessons learned. The most important of those lessons seems to me to be that bad, horrible, atrocious acts of cruelty are perpetrated on people from all walks of life, but the ability to stop the victimization thinking and lingering in despair is key to moving forward.

This positive way ahead applies to all of us as it seems that some relative majority of humans have suffered at the hands of neglect, abuse, lack of opportunity, bullying, condemnation, or some other bias that has negatively impacted lives. You see these Navajo woven baskets hanging upside-down here at the Hubbell Trading Post? This is considered bad in Navajo lore as baskets are used to hold important things such as food, and hanging them up in this way means they cannot serve their purpose and act in the capacity for which they were created It doesn’t always have to be this way and maybe someday they’ll be removed from the ceiling and restored to a position where, even if they never act as working baskets again, they’ll be on display and respected as what they were intended to be. People have to take themselves away from a position of remaining empty and restore their purpose. We are containers of important things such as knowledge, experience, and love, we should work together to develop our carrying capacity. We cannot relegate our function and utility to forces that only desire the sea of humanity to fill the role that brings fortune to a select few and not ourselves.

Think of this display as the face of humanity: we are pictures, baskets, pots, vessels, clothes, books, and rugs, things that all have great value, treasures if you will. When all these things are brought together, they are impressive in their magnificence, and we can easily recognize their collectibility. All of these things have something in common: someone with specific skills labored over each object to imbue them with form, particular characteristics, knowledge, artistic qualities, and every combination of those attributes that lends beauty and purpose to them. People are exactly the same, but we’ve lost sight of that as we’ve reduced individuals to being merely a thread, a particle of sand, a piece of wood pulp without real value, as though they were only a tiny constituent part of something bigger. This is plain wrong as we are all potentially fully formed artworks, fonts of wisdom, inspirations for others, and beacons of light that will lend skills and aesthetic grace to the next generation who can benefit from sharing if we don’t forget that we all have something worth offering each other.

The land is the surface we all dwell upon; the tree shares its durability and strength to give us shelter, comfort, tools, food, and heat. In the case of this hogan, the earth is also the roof that protects us from the elements. With basic sheltering needs cared for, we can turn our attention to our other needs, such as growing food, but in modern society, that is often available as a convenience at a nearby grocery store where the variety exceeds almost anything we might produce for ourselves. If those necessities are the minimum that is met, we must turn our attention to decorating ourselves and our environment. In earlier societies that meant painting and adorning ourselves, embellishing the walls of our dwelling, filling the air with our song and the music of our instruments. In modernity, while many are still occupied with the brand of clothes, makeup, size of a television, type of car, or cult objects turned into fetishized commodities such as phones, bikes, or handbags, the real element of total importance is how we enrich the internal world of our mind.

The exterior of your home, the entryway into that space, and the things that accentuate the appearance of places all carry little weight when it comes to what you bring to how you will see the world when standing before the multitude of situations you are ill-equipped to understand if you are willing to venture into the liminal.

Two-hundred forty-six years ago, in 1776, humanity required a document to express the need for freedom and declare independence as the greed and brutality of a ruling class that was busy owning other people in various forms of servitude or had yoked their subjects in rules and taxes that proved that souls and bodies had been conquered reached a breaking point. It would be 90 years after that and only after a civil war that those who might otherwise claim enlightenment were vanquished, and their ideas of slavery would start to be arrested. One hundred years after that and only one year after I was born, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. With this knowledge of the glacial pace of change, I suppose reluctantly that the recognition of the importance of the freedom of mind space and the necessity of knowledge acquisition won’t be a larger issue of societal imperative before 2065, when I’m long dead. It’s tragic how slow we are to come full circle.

The human is but a vessel. It is this idea of us carrying the dreams, aspirations, inventions, covenants, tools, traditions, and love that we should honor this maxim instead of trying to squash it, which I feel we are doing at this time. While we cannot know with any certainty who our distant relatives were 10,000 years ago, I believe that although life might have been fraught with quite difficult struggles, they understood freedom and independence in ways that transcend anything we believe we know. Circumstances would have dictated radically different approaches to survival, but reliance on family, community, and the wisdom of those with life skills would have been paramount. Today, we proverbially throw the weak to the wolves; we cast them to the street and into existences that bring such despair that the only way to survive is through substance abuse, violence, and ultimately an early death. Our compassion for one another is less than we might place on rare and valuable objects such as this old Navajo basket.

Please do not correct me by giving examples of those who help one another, the individuals who succeeded against the odds, or the various programs designed to alleviate these issues. We know full well that ignorance locks the unfortunate in systems and paradigms they are unable to escape from. It is only with concerted efforts to pry them free of their own darkness that they have a chance at finding greater value from within.

Take these three clay vessels of Navajo creation and design; today, they are likely worth more than $20,000, but sitting on this shelf, their value is merely theoretical. Someone must fall in love with them and recognize what they represent, and then if they are so fortunate, they might find a way to acquire them for their own home, but if they are truly magnanimous, they will donate them to a museum for all of humanity to enjoy into the future. Imagine if society as a whole was so generous.

The three Diné women offered a generous and friendly embrace in taking the time to share in our enthusiasm for the native culture out here in Ganado, Arizona, and the history of the Navajo Nation as an outpost and container for the traditions of their ancestors. Caroline is once again sworn in as a Junior Ranger, but this time, it was after learning more about the lives of Ganado Mucho, who was the 12th signer of the U.S.-Navajo Treaty of 1868 that ended the captivity of  Navajo following the Long Walk. We learned of John Lorenzo Hubbell (known as the “Old Mexican”), who in 1878 started this trading post whose success in part relied on the friendship of Ganado Mucho. Hubbell, who had learned to speak Navajo, had the distinct advantage of being able to better share and communicate with the survivors of atrocities that risked erasing the people of these lands, and with that ability and knowledge, he helped establish trade in Navajo crafts that allowed the post to remain an important location into the 1960s when the National Park system took over operations. Had the Fred Harvey company taken over Hubbell, it might very well have been turned into a tourist attraction similar to the “Friendly Indian” places along historic Route 66, selling imported “hand-made” jewelry and plastic tomahawks. Today, we had an opportunity to peer into history and understand a little more about the changes our ancestors wrought upon the indigenous people of North America due to the empathy of a governmental body responsible for preserving not only nature but knowledge too. If you wonder if I’m contradicting myself, nothing is ever black and white, as people, governments, and cultures should all be evolving if they are to remain healthy. Just because mistakes are made every day, this doesn’t imply they can’t be rectified as our knowledge grows.

So there isn’t “nothing” out here in the middle of nowhere. There is everything that embodies the potential of people to find what they don’t yet know, to discover that freedom and independence emerge from wide open spaces that encourage people to learn what they’ve not found. First, people mustn’t be afraid of the apparent emptiness that their ignorance casts as something evil, hostile, or in need of being conquered by force; it is simply the unknown that, with time, is knowable. It is the wandering in open spaces that speaks of the greatest freedom and begs visitors to fill that apparent void with the truth of reality that exists everywhere.

The ideas regarding freedom and independence might seem like a rock impervious to the folly of fools, but it is precisely the fools that erode the structures that hold together the mountains of society and culture. Humanity is at a juncture on the map of our future to harness the potential of people to do good, or we can turn and do bad and erase all the beauty we could preserve if we chose to understand how fragile the most important things are. Happy 4th of July! On this day, we celebrate our opportunity to experience freedom and this incredible independence while being stewards of such important ideas.

Another Day in the Wasatch Mountains

The air up here in the Wasatch Mountain Range is crisp and clear, making it a perfect place for hot-air ballooners looking for an exciting way to see the surrounding landscape. Sure, a part of us would like to gain that perspective of floating over the countryside, but the uncertainty of how our fear of heights will handle this situation allows our curiosity to back away from feeling the need to do all things just because we could. Our terrestrial viewpoint isn’t a bad one either, after all, we are offered countless opportunities to witness an infinity of sights and experiences such as this one upon walking out the door of our motel.

This morning, we are heading up through the town of Midway on Pine Canyon Drive, a bit of a nail-biter with very few opportunities to pull over on the narrow road full of hairpin turns. During winter, this road is closed, and it’s obvious why. That’s Midway in the distance on the valley floor, and to the far left, you can spy a corner of Heber City. At some point, just before our trailhead, we merged onto Guardsman Pass Road, and shortly after, we reached our parking area.

Good thing we showed up early as there were already 20 cars parked in the large dirt lot, but by the time we’d come off our hike, the area was full, and people were parking a quarter mile away in an overflow area on a sketchy steep side driveway, while others who hadn’t heeded the signs that there was NO parking along the road were getting ticketed or maybe on their way to being towed. By the time we were finished with our walk, we only wanted some food and to rest our tired feet. Enough of that; time to get on down the Bloods Lake Trail before continuing on to Lackawaxen Lake.

A small detail to note: we parked in the shadow of Jupiter Peak, which stands just below 10,000 feet, and our hike will take us over towards Clayton Peak, towering at 10,689 feet (3,258 meters). The trail itself is supposed to be just over 5 miles with an elevation gain of 1,118 feet (310 meters), but considering that we took an alternative trail back to the car, we had more gain than that and, of course, the descent. And while this was our major activity of the day, somehow, we amassed over 8 miles of walking (13km).

As you’ve seen by now, the forested trail is beautiful and in keeping with the theme established a couple of days ago at Cedar Breaks National Monument: we are here during the season of wildflowers. These particular yellow flowers appear to be part of the packera genus of plants and are commonly known as golden ragwort.

Switchbacks at this elevation are never really fun for those of us who live in lower climes, but the excitement of being in such an intriguingly beautiful location and our insatiable desire to experience more move us forward, even if we have to take frequent breaks to catch our breath.

For our efforts and treasure offered to the gods of capitalism, we are afforded payoffs like this. At this point, we are little more than a mile up the trail, and this is also the place most hikers park themselves if they are able to endure the mosquitoes. We’ll only be here momentarily as Lackawaxen Lake is still another mile and a half away, and we have about 32 miles (563km) of driving ahead of us today before reaching the town of Blanding, Utah, where we’ll have an overnight.

If we didn’t live an 11-hour drive away from here, we’d certainly make the effort to visit more often. As for flying up to Salt Lake City and grabbing a rental car, that would add no less than $600 to the cost of the weekend. When using our own car, we spent about $140 in gas to be here, and that’s for the roundtrip.

That’s Clayton Peak up there, and it’s just below it down in the treeline where we’ll find our next lake and even more mosquitoes.

Some small rocks to walk over before we reached some serious boulders that required negotiating, along with a bit of snow further along the trail just before arriving at the lake. Regarding the jagged boulder field, a couple of times, I found my way through on my butt, as standing high above the gaps was triggering my anxiety.

But we made it to Lackawaxen Lake, where we lingered for two, maybe three minutes before running away with a cloud of angry, hungry mosquitoes on our tail.

My stoic, resilient, hard-ass wife is not one to let some pesky mosquitoes interfere with her joy, so she just keeps on going while ignoring the bloodsuckers drinking from her bare legs so they can make baby mosquitoes. I, on the other hand, shoo them away, swat them, nearly panic when they approach my ears, ask Caroline if she sees any of them on my shirt, and then whine that we don’t have a gallon of Deet/bug spray with us, hell that we don’t even have the tiniest bottle with us. We are at the mercy of mosquitoes, but we have the option to leave while they must live and die here.

While my eyes luxuriated in the spectacular beauty of the meadow, and I considered what I might write next, I was still thinking of mosquitoes and my snarky comment that we have the option to leave while they must remain. This is where they’ll live and likely die and while some mosquitoes can fly up to 10 miles, I’m guessing that most live near a good water source and a place they can easily find food. Food, that’s what we are to the females, this much I knew; what I didn’t know is that the males feed on nectar but only for a brief ten days as they flash into existence and die rapidly, after only ten days! In comparison, female mosquitoes enjoy a much longer life that, on average, is estimated at up to 45 days, while other sources say it is closer to only two weeks. I also learned about diapause, which is the condition when insects effectively enter a kind of hibernation state due to conditions unfavorable for their species, such as mosquitos here in these mountains when winter sets in.

As I was looking inward to find something sweet to write about these two sacrificial blood banks that the mosquitoes zeroed in on every time we took the slightest pause, I had to chuckle to myself as I somewhat maliciously considered that many people in society are frozen in diapause waiting for optimal conditions for them to emerge from stasis and start living lives in the great happiness of optimism instead of their futile non-existence under the rock of despair. Long live the smile of knowing you are alive and have options.

Today was our day to gaze upon this scene for the first time in our lives, and while we may never have the good fortune to ever look at it again, we’ve been here, even if only for a moment. A thousand years from now, this view might not have changed much at all, but the memory of us or specifics of our existence will be long gone as we’ll have been dead for more than 950 years by then. It’s all temporary and virtually impossible to see but a tiny fraction of the space rock we live on for such a very brief time. In some way, we are all like male mosquitos existing for but ten days where everything we will ever know and see must be had in those meager 240 hours. Every second counts, my fellow humans, or are you really content with your mosquito-like existence? On second thought, I should consider that those I’d like to reach might never read something about someone else’s adventures and thoughts as they go about a life of profound isolation. All the same, I’ll just leave this right here.

Wasatch penstemon flowers.

More Indian paintbrush.

Bring them all together, and voila! a beautiful little patch of wildflowers.

The horror of horrors was our drive into Park City, which is a bastion of self-important asshole drivers high on their wealth and oblivious to civility. I will never again make the mistake of passing through this corner of America, but the view from above this wealthy enclave (towards the right and out of view) is a spectacular one.

We are on Utah State Road 35, driving southeast, preferring to take the scenic route instead of the faster highway. Tomorrow being the 4th of July, this flag-lined stretch of road feels like one of the most honest celebrations of the big day.

Freshly shorn sheep free-ranging next to the road is not something one sees every day, so we had to turn around, pull over, and hang out with all the sheepies and their lambs.

I believe this to be the last photo I shot on this stretch of road before transitioning to the 191 in Duchesne.

How long should it take to drive to where we are going today? Just as long as it takes, considering that we have to stop for a dozen sights along the way, such as these elegant horses.

It’s the details between the other details that paint the bigger picture of what was what when we were out somewhere, seeing the things that became memories that must fade with the passage of days.

I must have taken dozens of photos waiting to capture the right one of this gas flare and this fire unicorn certainly qualifies as perfect in my book of stumbling into the coincidental.

We are somewhere between Duchesne and Helper, Utah, at this time, and signs of people living out this way are few. What is here is a lot of oil and gas pumping. We were also offered a lesson in stopping in the middle of the street for a photo when thinking there was nobody behind us; I was about to step out of our car for a photo when I heard the roar of a giant diesel engine and then caught sight of a large oil tanker speeding straight at us. I threw the car back into gear and hit the gas as hard as I could so the guy fast approaching didn’t have to slam on his brakes to avoid rolling over us and snuffing our lives out of existence.

Beauty is found in the fluid and infinite state of things; we sense it in the clouds, layers of stone, patterns of where trees grow, the song of birds, music, or the sound of flowing water. We are always passing through sensuality and the passions of nature but are not always tuned to understanding the equation to which we are intrinsically linked. Every time we venture into these unknown ramparts and bucolic scenes, we are enmeshing ourselves in the greater tapestry of life as humans have come to know it. Expressing this relationship in words, images, music, or poetry is our primal language that transcends the work/enslavement structures distilled from others who desire to use human capital for their own means. To be out, exploring, observant, and in delight is to be free. The amazement of opportunity is where freedom is most easily found.

Somewhere near Castle Gate seems appropriately named to me.

While we can’t always avoid major highways, we try not to miss the few views worth capturing, even if it means rolling down the window, having Caroline take the wheel, and me shooting the photo while driving at 80 mph. Yes, that is exactly how this photo was captured.

Arches National Park and Moab, Utah, are out there over the horizon.

No time for crowded tourist destinations this late in the day as we still have 75 miles ahead of us.

Okay, just a quick stop at Wilson Arch.

We’d better stop for this, too, as maybe this will be the best photo we are afforded for sunset.

But then we saw the sun hiding just behind a sandstone bluff, sending out god rays and some golden glow, letting me frame the foreground as a silhouette. This, though, has to be it as it’s getting late, and we still have to check in to our motel further down the road.

I can’t just drive by clouds that are this spectacular, but I swear, this is it.

Okay, so I lied.

Tricked you here; you might have thought this was one more lie regarding stopping on our way to Blanding; well, we were pulling into our motel parking lot at 9:30 and just enchanted that down on the ground, it appeared to be already nighttime, but this one section of the sky was still capturing daylight from the long-set sun that we thought would be impossible to capture. But it turned out pretty good, or so I thought. So this is the last of the 37 images that accompany our day that started high in the mountains and followed us down to canyon lands in the southeast of Utah.

Exploring the Wasatch Mountains

That’s Utah’s famous Mount Timpanogos, the second-highest mountain in the Wasatch Range that’s part of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. (Yesterday, we were seeing its other side.) This is the backdrop of Heber City, where we are staying since we are relegated to the poor person’s enclave of mere millionaires instead of the far greater (billionaires’) village of neighboring Park City (said with incredible reverence).

Just north at the fork in the road, you’ll start heading up towards Jordanelle Reservoir and the town of Kamas beyond that. We are aiming to get on the Mirror Lake Scenic Highway, a.k.a. Utah State Highway 150, that heads north towards Wyoming, although we are keeping things in Utah today.

That’s the Provo River slicing through the forest and feeding Jordanelle Reservoir that we just passed.

Our path of discovering whatever lies ahead has brought us to the Upper Provo River Falls.

Human banana for scale.

Wouldn’t you just know that I’d be at home writing this when I learned that pine cone buds are fully edible? We don’t miss the opportunity to sniff at Ponderosa pine trees now that we know that they smell of vanilla or caramel, but now I’ll need to know what those pine cones taste like.

Pulling into the area at Washington Lake Campground, where our trailhead is located, might seem to be discouraging as the parking lots were packed, but once out on the trail, other visitors were so well distributed across the vast trail system that we never felt crowded. Though I would like to admonish owners of poorly trained barking dogs as they are the bane of a great experience on trails, and so are the dog poop bags left trailside; why even bag it up?

Things quieted down as we got closer to Crystal Lake.

Mosquitoes! Guess who forgot the bug spray? Well, it wasn’t me, as I easily and rightfully assumed that it was in Mrs. Wise’s backpack of everything.

Why pay for Alltrails if, after choosing your trails, you fail to download the app, load your maps for offline use (there’s no signal on the trail), and neglect even printing them out so you have something to remind you of where precisely the trails of interest are after identifying them while still at home in the days prior to your trip? You do this due to a lack of familiarity with the incredible utility of Alltrails, likely in some part due to cynicism that says, “Everything you pay for on the internet that’s not a physical product is probably some kind of ripoff.” Well, now I know.

A tiger swallowtail butterfly among the dandelions is just one of those embellishments that assure us that we are here on this trail at exactly the right time of year and that no other weekend could have been as perfect.

Lucky for us, at a fork in the trail, a young couple heading to Long Lake had a small map with them. They were certain that their trail was to the left and that our way to Cliff Lake could only be on the right. Along the way, we ran into Boy Scouts who were a bit surprised about the trail they were on as it was unfamiliar to them, but we were able to assure them that this was certainly the way to Crystal Lake and Washington beyond that, so they were relieved and happy heading downhill because the trail that had taken them out to Wall Lake (well beyond our destination) had been a lot more strenuous.

As for hiking up here at 10,100 feet of elevation above sea level (3,078 meters), I felt some very minor lightheadedness and even the occasional ping of a headache, but stopping for a sec and taking a big swallow of water helped me adjust to the altitude and we just kept huffing and puffing along the trail. About this selfie, Caroline asked that I make a better effort to take photos of the two of us as I’ve not posted many selfies in a while. I scrolled back on the blog and saw that it’s true: it’s been since May 26 when I last shared an image of us.

This is the end of the trail as far as our hike is concerned, and from here, we’ll head back to our car and one of those incredible lunches of bologna-and-boiled-egg sandwiches wrapped in lettuce. For those curious, we probably exchanged expressions of love no less than 40 times already today, held hands over a dozen times, stopped for a kiss, and snuggled on the trail more times than what is probably reasonable to normal people. While it’s been said countless times previously here on my blog, we do not, will not, and cannot take any of this for granted. We are well aware of how incredibly fortunate we are to not only explore perfection in delightful places while deeply in love with one another, we have the health, means, and desire to do these things.

We just had to pull over here on Utah Highway 150 at the Bald Mountain Scenic Overlook because, well, just look.

By the way, this is the namesake of this pullout and overlook.

That’s Moosehorn Lake out there, while the tallest peak towards the right is Mount Agassiz, standing at 12,433 feet tall (3,790 meters). Looking again at the Alltrails website, it’s surreal how many trails are spread out across the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Somewhere along the way, we caught someone who told us that they were still having snow flurries up here during the past couple of weeks, so the time of year we can plan for a return will likely be limited to July 1st through early September, but I do hope that maybe in 2023 we’ll make the effort to possibly take some longer hikes and maybe even some camping in the backcountry. Just as I finish typing that, I’m thinking, hey, what about those mosquitoes, Mr. Ambitious?

We were driving north without a plan. Maybe we’d make it to Wyoming, but we needn’t do that; we are not out here collecting trophies. A dirt road directing us to Christmas Meadow and the Stillwater Trail, which is part of another trail leading to Ostler Lake, is out here, so we go.

We are excited to make this the second hike of the day; it’s beautiful.

Christmas Meadow looking out at Ostler Peak at 12,718 feet!

Frost Aster flowers and yes, they are edible while the leaves can be used to make tea.

We couldn’t ask for better conditions for a hike. The trail is a long one, but we’ll just go as far as we’re comfortable before turning around.

Not 10 minutes later, we hear thunder in the distance, and some dark clouds are coming over the nearby mountains. Then, just 10 minutes after that, we run into this obstacle, hardly insurmountable, but a light sprinkling of rain is starting to fall so we turn around.

After a short nap for me, while the rain passed, we decided to throw caution to the wind and head out on the Ruth Lake Trail for a quick 2-mile hike.

Hayden Peak with the threatening weather still looming on the horizon.

Our timing couldn’t have been any better as blue skies started reappearing. Why we hadn’t considered the chance of wet weather during any of our previous trips this year is beyond my imagination. Not once have we brought umbrellas or our rain jackets on any of our excursions out of Phoenix this year. We obviously have room in the car to simply keep them in the back, but I guess my eternal optimism that the sun will always be shining on us lets me be careless regarding threats of poor weather.

Rocks, mountains, grass, trees, birds, clouds, love, friends, and happiness were all on hand to create a scene that likely holds a lot more intrinsic value to the two people that were on hand at this moment so the photo would forever be embued with qualities that transcend what is actually seen by others.

Nature legitimizes existence; it is the fabric from which we have emerged and from which modern consumer society has tried to alienate us. When we gaze into nature on a beautiful day our sense of self somehow grows larger as though we were blooming like a flower. How lucky are those of us able to plant ourselves in such places and bask in the sun.

Like this nameless still pond reflecting the world around it, what will you reflect of the world around you? Maybe if you live in the awareness of turmoil and you are surrounding yourself with the chaos of uncertainty and fear, your reflection of that universe will let others know that you are not at peace and that a tempest is raging within.

Again, the parking area was full to capacity, and yet, as is easily seen in these images, we appeared to be out here alone. Maybe instead of seeing the potential for a crowded trail due to the parking situation, I would be better served by getting it in my head that my perceptions heavily influence how my reality is going to play out.

Not just this photo but the one above too is of Ruth Lake that we’ve obviously reached.

All of this was well worth the price of admission, which turned out to be what it always is: you must get yourself out here, make the investment in paying for gas, food, and lodging, and then you’ll be here too, and the better for it.

Indian Paint Brush colors the landscape from here to Alaska, or at least this has been our experience.

We are circumnavigating the lake with increasingly sore feet, and while we grow tired, we are not ready to give up on these moments of bliss.

We were just shy of covering 10 miles (almost 16 km) today up here at an elevation of over 10,000 feet (3,000 meters), and at the end of it, after so much strenuous hiking, I found that my chest hurt. I can only attribute this to the increased effort required to oxygenate my blood at this elevation and my lungs working overtime. Considering the alternative is too scary a thought, maybe it’s a good thing I’m visiting a cardiologist at the end of July. The pain persisted through the night but never gave me real concern as the discomfort seemed localized in my sternum where the ribs attach to it which would make sense that it was nothing more than the extra exertion I needed today.

Sunset would be experienced by others; we were too worn down to care a lick about finding a spectacular location to capture our setting sun; all we wanted was to return to our room and pretend it wasn’t so damned light out at 7:30 at night. In its stead, I present you with the newest addition to my collection of handmade socks. This pair arrives once again from the loving hands of Caroline using yarn from Seaside Yarn & Fiber we purchased on a previous trip up on the Oregon coast.

Once back in the car, we decided to celebrate our grand day out with dinner in a restaurant. Online resources pointed us to a fancy-looking restaurant with good reviews, but their parking lot was deserted – a bad sign on a Friday. Luckily, on our way in, we passed a couple on the way out and, uncharacteristically, asked them for their opinion. We soon found out they thought the place was mediocre and overpriced and instead told us to try the Mirror Lake Diner in Kamas. The diner was just down the street and busy – a good sign! Our dinner was delicious and the perfect end to the day.

Beautiful Summer Day in Utah

I need a generic photo for blog posts describing the first nights we are out on the road; that photo would be of a golden brown rotisserie chicken dripping fat as the fire sweats that old bird. This would best illustrate how we sleep on these restless roadside stops. One never knows the quality of the bed, the temperature of the room, or the wail of the window air-conditioning unit. Does this imply that we slept poorly? Obviously, because we struggled to find something even close to the thing known as sleep. So it goes, we know this dance in the been there, done that sense.

Our no-frills breakfast (thanks to our in-room microwave and the ice chest of stuff we are dragging with us) saved me from the potato/toast orgy my petulant inner 4-year-old expects when we are out in the land of the greasy spoon. The menu in cabin 6 featured warmed-up pre-cooked burgers and a shared avocado, which helped keep things in the keto realm for me, and right now, that will have to do.

A few miles away, the state line separating Arizona and Utah was crossed with no fanfare; we just drove in and minutes later stopped in Kanab for some weak coffee, which in a pinch is better than no coffee. Experience tells me that a photo of our coffee stop makes for boring imagery so I skipped that, and anyway, the scenery surrounding Kanab is far more interesting. No, this isn’t Bryce National Park, but it is indicative of what is seen out that way. As we were just visiting Bryce not too long ago, we’ll just keep going north.

Hey, is that something beautiful over there? Well then, we’ll just have to stop to look at the forest through the trees.

This brook with bleached volcanic stones was the main attraction, and while I should have made an effort to photograph the nearby craggy lava field, we have places to be and know from past experience that we can be our own worst enemies when it comes to arriving somewhere at a reasonable hour.

Ninety minutes north of Fredonia, Arizona,  we arrived at our first destination, Cedar Breaks National Monument. Not sure if these people are done with their 4th of July holiday already or if they were just passing through, but they are pointed at the exit. If you’ve read one of our previous posts where we visit a national park or monument you probably have guessed by now that we’ll be making our first stop at the visitors center for Caroline to pick up her Junior Ranger booklet.

With booklet in hand, along with a new t-shirt celebrating the season of wildflowers, we are on our way up the Spectra Point Trail. It’s obviously a beautiful day out here, and nobody else is parked at the trailhead yet, so things promise to be quiet. Our elevation is 10,500 feet above sea level (3,200 meters), and I’m feeling a bit lightheaded but nothing too uncomfortable.

What surprises await us just over the crest?

It doesn’t take long before I grow uncomfortable with the nearness to the edge of a massive dropoff. We only made it a little more than a quarter-mile up the trail before a particular corner whispered at me that I wouldn’t enjoy coming back this way as, at that point, I’d be having that open abyss painted spectacularly large throughout my peripheral vision. Time to turn around.

But it’s not time to leave; we are here to stop and smell the flowers, all of them.

Just up the road is our next trail, and it starts at the Chessmen Ridge Overlook; we’ll check that out first.

Blam, Chessman Ridge.

Straight ahead is the Pond Loop Trail. Oh, lucky day.

It was ten years ago that I first identified the common donkel (donkey-camel hybrid genetically engineered to walk on two legs) while on the island of Oahu; see proof right here. Since then, this specimen has proven to be incredibly valuable over and over again, though as she ages, her humps have been shrinking (front and back). The utility of my donkel cannot be underestimated as she continues the life support functions required to support me. All she requires on my part is a near-constant stream of hugs and for that, I’m offered water, snacks, sunscreen, and extended vision with the use of binoculars she seems to always have at the ready.

I thought pink and blue Spanish bluebells would have been on separate plants, but here’s nature proving me wrong, or is this just a trick of comingling plants and my inability to differentiate their cohabitation?

It’s spaces such as this that will have to suffice as being the parade route we’ll be missing this year, while the flowers will have to fill the gap of not seeing a fireworks show along the way.

Heading up into Utah this long 4th of July weekend during early summer, I don’t know what we were expecting beyond the planned hiking trails, but running into these columbines are proving to be a nice surprise. I wonder if Alltrails has a search function that allows us to find the most spectacular displays of wildflowers as an attribute of trails across America?

If you are thinking I’m getting a bit redundant with similar shots, well, that’s just the way it is, as these reminders are here to bring us back to July 1st, 2022, when Caroline and I found ourselves walking along a canyon edge to a pond during a magnificent wildflower bloom. These were the days, huh, wife?

The columbines are everywhere, and while I probably took photos of dozens, I present just one more, as this post is about more than beautiful flowers.

It’s also about forested paths under deep blue skies and fluffy little clouds.

Just out of sight was graffiti carved into a fallen tree that said, “Monet was here.”

What doesn’t mix with beauty are the idiots who feel the need to bring gadgets that play their music out loud so everyone within a couple of hundred feet has to listen to their insipid soundtrack that erases the wind, birds, frogs, insects, and any semblance of their consideration or intelligence. Then, there was the lunkhead who brought out his drone; even though everywhere you go in the parks today, people are told that they are in a “N0 Drone Zone.” People pay as much attention to that as those told that dogs are not allowed on the trail. Aside from those annoyances (quickly pushed out of mind for my well-being), we were again alone and enjoying the serenity of the place, undisturbed by the selfish abominations that went about their merry ways.

After a couple of miles, though our Fitbits said it was closer to three miles, we were aiming for the parking lot, where opened our ice chest and made some of these terrific lettuce-wrapped bologna-and-boiled-egg sandwiches.

Ms. Happy Nerd-Face has yet again been granted the privilege of representing another national monument after geeking out on answering all the questions there are to answer in order to be anointed a Junior Ranger. I’d imagine that by now, if she were to attempt wearing them all, she’d be stooped over like Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

It was time to leave the park as we still have a long drive up Utah Highway 89 which parallels Interstate 15 but without the freeway stress and far enough away to feel like we are appropriately on vacation, not in heavy traffic and franchise ugliness.

A million thanks to everyone who opts for freeways, thus affording us nature freaks these moments when the entirety of nature within our purview is ours alone. I should point out that my grumbling about the numbskulls that intrude into our solemnity in some paragraphs/photos above is my own fault as we typically know better than being out in America on major holidays due to the dragging out the worst examples of rabble our country has to offer.

Just think about this: here we are under a blue sky where a dirt road slicing through grasslands running to a distant mountain offers us the opportunity to be among approximately twenty-three octovigintillion particles coursing through reality and where idiocy is kept at a distance, there is nothing else to do but enjoy the perfection of it all in peace and happiness.

Here is the result of a lost 20 minutes where I searched for what mountain this is. I know it’s near Provo, Utah, but I can’t find it using an image search from Microsoft or Google. Streetview hasn’t come to my rescue, and now, frantic, I have to give up and return to writing. I’d wager a dollar that after Caroline gets hold of this acquiescing to failure there’ll be a note from her telling future us just where we were and what mountain peak we were looking at. [It is the “backside” of Mount Timpanogos – Caroline]

This is Bridal Veil Falls, which I have zero ambiguity about. Believe it or not, there were people crazy enough to cut over the thinnest trail on the scree slope visible on the left of this image in order to reach the foot of the falls. My knees buckled as I watched others carefully maneuver the razor’s edge.

We are starting to run low on daylight as we start passing the Deer Creek Reservoir with this image having to stand in for the end of the day. We are already in the Wasatch Mountains, which is the main destination of this adventure, and are now only about 15 minutes away from Heber City, where we’ll be spending the next couple of nights at the Swiss Alps Inn.

Mystery Valley Hike

Dawn in Monument Valley Arizona

We were up before 5:30 and gone by 5:45. As luck would have it, we not only have the best hill in all of Monument Valley to experience the sunrise, but the sky has absolutely the right amount of clouds to deliver a level of spectacular that will help provide the most incredible photos of sunrise ever taken at this location. Then there’s that face in the clouds on the right looking down upon us that I can’t unsee. I’m studying it, trying to decipher what it wanted to share, but all I can do is look at those eyes and wonder if they are a portal through which the face with a bumpy nose in the rocks on the left is talking to the heavens, informing the universe to smile upon this day because we are here. I swear they are looking at each other, testing me if I know how to perceive my world.

Dawn in Monument Valley Arizona

And then the faces give way, disappearing as the sky obliges their wishes to delight us down here. How about some night, day, blue, orange, red, and fire dropped into your eyeballs? Will that do, or do you need more?

Sunrise in Monument Valley Arizona

Look closely maybe everything is already here.

Sunrise in Monument Valley Arizona

Oh, I’ve got it…here’s some white light with an intensity that will diffract off the clouds and rocks with rays that reach out to touch the sand. How’s that? Satisfied? Hmmm, something else huh? I know, turn around.

Sunrise in Monument Valley Arizona

Come on now, tell me what’s being channeled; what’s your first impression? That’s right, for a split second, you thought you were looking at Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock on the other side of the earth for those who might know). The universe lets us know that quantum projection is one of its tricks if the mind is ready for phenomena that defy belief, but there it is. Maybe magic isn’t real, but then again, if the imagination is able to find a playground of knowledge that juxtaposes words and images at just the right moment when we are unchained from some small part of our critical mind, we can bask in the wizardry of allowing ourselves to be tricked. Now go forward and turn around.

Sunrise in Monument Valley Arizona

Two-hundred-sixty million years ago, the sand that would become the basis for the spires, buttes, and mesas of Monument Valley was deposited. De Chelly and Wingate sandstones are the names given to these petrified remnants, and that’s what we are looking at here at this incredible site. On the right, the spire standing alone is known as the Totem Pole; it is the remains of a butte around which everything else was eroded. How many other spires in the previous millions of years have come and gone, and how long will it be after this one collapses before something similar is ever seen again?

Sunrise in Monument Valley Arizona

While others are heading in, we are heading out. Another adventure awaits.

Sunrise in Monument Valley Arizona

Not so fast but that doesn’t slow down Cody and his race to the exit for a hot meal. Our guide, as a condition of us staying overnight in the park, must stay nearby the entire time, as in the truck he brought us to the hogan with. For a short moment, he’ll disappear up the road for breakfast with his family in the warmth of his home. And besides, we passed all these places on our way in yesterday. Sure, but the air was choked on heavy dust that obscured the blue skies with haze, and while I’ve photographed it all before, I can never get enough of how beautiful it all looks to me every time I’m fortunate enough to be in Monument Valley yet again. So, from the crisp cold air in the back of the truck, I snap away, hoping a photo here and there won’t be too blurry from all the bouncing we’re doing down the well-worn dirt road.

Sunrise in Monument Valley Arizona

At the facilities of the View Hotel, yep, this is the view; we dipped into the restaurant and, mistaken for guests, were allowed to grab a couple of cups of coffee. This coffee was as necessary as capturing this image of the Mittens silhouetted in the rising sun on this promising day. I told you that Earth and Sky worked out a deal to offer the most impressive views of Monument Valley ever witnessed. Just wait until you see what comes next.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Buttes, mesas, and red sand, but it’s not exactly Monument Valley, though it is on the edge of it. It’s something else somewhere else, and that little strip without scrub brush or small bushes is our road to this place. We are visiting Mystery Valley.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Or are we? Are those rain clouds starting to build up? Our guide wishes they were carrying rain as, according to him, it’s been too long since these parts have seen a good soaking. As a matter of fact, he says he’s not alone in his opinion that people up here are tired of all the wind and blowing sand. Come deep sand or a flood; we are not turning around as we are on an adventure to see things we’ve never seen before.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Thirty minutes earlier, as we rounded that bright orange butte left of center, Cody told us to take a good look at it because by the time we are done today, “You’ll have to look hard to find it.”

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

And so begins an interesting strategy in tour guidance; Cody stops for us to exit the truck and then informs us that we’ll be walking from this point. He’ll meet us around the corner, “Don’t worry, you’ll easily see where I park the truck.” We get walking, but I see it as a challenge as maybe we are supposed to find something, and he’s wondering how observant we are. The first thing I find is a small panel of a few petroglyphs with this one the most intriguing to my eyes. I have no idea what this could have meant other than the obvious regarding the four directions. A search for similar images offered no clues, so I looked into my theory about nursery rhymes I discussed in my previous post but came up flat there, too. When we reached Cody, I asked about the petroglyphs, and he informed me that there were none in this area; either he didn’t know these, or they were not supposed to be seen by outsiders due to their cultural significance. I’m going with the more intriguing explanation that these are secret symbols that offer clues about the mechanics of the world among the Diné (Navajo).

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

I not only closely examine the detail along this walk but I also have to step back as I just know we’ll be tested on what we found when we reach Cody. From this rock, I easily see a hidden Morse code message recorded in the dots and lines that spell out Ayoó án ín shí in Navajo.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

While I was able to identify the names of the various holes over in Monument Valley, this will remain a mystery which seems appropriate considering that we are in Mystery Valley. I’m already starting to understand the naming of this place we have only begun to explore.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

I fully understand that this next description will likely be met with a healthy amount of incredulity, but the truth, as it is, which has been pulled from the depths of the fantastic, goes something like this. This cavity is effectively a kind of MRI cross-section of the progenitor of an alien species that has since left this world. The petroglyph, along with the hidden Morse code in the rock, are the clues needed to decipher the mystery, while the hole in the rock points to the place in the sky where this race of beings took up residence. Please try to follow what I came to understand about what precisely we are looking at. This was a dual-brained creature with the limbic system housed in the rear part of the skull on the left while the cerebrum was found in the top cavity right-of-center. Below the cerebrum are the mouth and nasal passage. I should point out that this profile view has the creature looking to the right. This being was sightless, instead relying on the inheritance from sharks in the form of the Ampullae of Lorenzini in the lower jaw, bottom right structure.

I, too, am incredulous that this kind of information has been shared with me, but as I was informed, it doesn’t matter, as nobody of any real importance reads the crap I share here anyway.

Edit: I’ve since been informed that above the front brain, partially cut off in my photo, was the other part of the Ampullae of Lorenzini that allowed the electro-sensitive cells a vector-like operational capacity so the conducting positively charged hydrogen atoms (protons) were able to produce multi-dimensional images seeing not only the physical space before them but able to slice into time and quantum-realms to read in all directions. 

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

So, how in the world do I continue to make this post compelling after dropping such a bombshell? I’ll just come up with even more far-out nonsense, that’s how. Or maybe I don’t.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

So, I have a basic understanding of this aspect of geology that softer rocks erode faster than harder ones, but I admit I have a difficult time getting my head around these formations. With this bit of knowledge, I can only figure that when this sandstone was settling, there were other things filling the area where these pockets are, but what could that have been?

Oops, I could have removed the previous paragraph and appeared smarter than I am but I’m leaving it here. After typing the question mark, I did what any half-aware human should do: go to your favorite search engine and enter, “How do pockets form in sandstone.” I ended up at a kid’s website called MiniMeGeology that explains it like this, “A liquid form of a mineral such as calcite or quartz “glues” the sand grains together. The holes that are left are great places for storing water or oil.”

[After inquiring with my favorite search engine, I found out that these sandstone shapes have a name. They are called tafoni and are caused by a combination of complex processes that involve water, salt, and mechanical erosion. Caroline]

I should have stuck to making up crazy stories that might camouflage my ignorance and lend authority that I’m actually exploring style instead of having to admit to a lack of real answers.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Hey, old dog, see those pockets? They were laser-etched by a race of two-brained aliens as a kind of punchcard that, once deciphered, will offer you magic powers to write beyond the mediocrity you currently are hobbled with. Now, get cracking.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Our trek in Mystery Valley continues with a visit to the House of Many Hands.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

The area is fenced off, and it seems that visitors have been respecting the barrier, as only ancient cow patties are on the other side of the fence. Those plops of poo are looking fairly ancient and ready to turn to dust and are the first clue that the fence line was moved further away from pictographs and ruins in the hopes these artifacts will survive their encounter with modern man (and beast).

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Thirty-one thousand years ago, people venturing into Chauvet Cave in what is today France blew a mouth of ochre over their hand, leaving a negative image of it. A thousand years ago, on this wall, people gathered here at their homes and did the exact same thing, except they used white clay to achieve the same effect.

Ferrison Cody in Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Meet Ferrison Cody (who prefers to be called Cody), our tour guide courtesy of Simpson’s Trailhandler Tours, who have been the provider of our sunset tour in Monument Valley, Navajo taco dinner, evening in a hogan, sunrise tour, and now this visit to Mystery Valley. Cody is a funny guy with a wry sense of humor that might keep you guessing, but by the time we depart company, we’ll be looking forward to the day we can employ his services once again. While he suggested a short 3.5-hour hike when we return, that would never be enough, so we’ll also consider a 5-hour slog up Hunt’s Mesa so we can capture an entire weekend of his time. While this hike isn’t over with as far as the blog post is concerned, I’m sharing right now that this guy ranks up with being an all-time favorite of ours, and we certainly let him know just that.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

With the photo of Cody, we were now on the hiking leg of this 5-hour adventure. Our attention was directed to a narrow crack that was reminiscent of granaries we’ve seen elsewhere; if there’s any truth that this one hidden well out of sight actually stored mead, well, I’m taking that with a grain of salt.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

I don’t know if this was meant to be a curlew, a pelican, or maybe an ibis, but I’m not aware of any long-bill birds that don’t live near water. That doesn’t mean a lot when you consider all that I don’t know.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Pottery shards, cutting objects, and gold nuggets are just scattered about willy-nilly…oh, did I say gold? I meant rocks.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

John Ford slept here.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

This landscape, from a distance, appears as if it’s just another part of Monument Valley, but out here on foot, the diversity of views seems to be shifting constantly, just as these sands frozen in time must have been doing millions of years ago.

Caroline Wise in Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Maybe I could offer you more information about this arch but if I share too much, you might have your curiosity sated and then not have the need for the services of Cody. Speaking of curiosity, up under the arch are some ruins that will not be seen in close detail by my eyes, but obviously, my wife will see them with a better view than I will. The ascent seemed straightforward enough, but I turned myself around in my imagination to see that if I were up there, getting back down would likely turn into some terrifying moment of gut-wrenching acrophobia.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

This was my best vantage point to see what my wife would have a more intimate experience with. On the roundhouse, there was an entry on the right side, and while she could have easily gotten much closer than she ultimately did, she kept a respectful distance. and when she was finished with her inspection, she finally considered that she had to come back down. Funny enough, she didn’t use her boots but instead relied on her butt and the intense friction its mass would provide her, ensuring there’d be no slipping on the steep sandstone.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

I spoke of shifting perspectives, and these three images demonstrate just that, I hope.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Same arch different place standing underneath it.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

And finally, the majority of its surrounding structure.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Obviously, not the same arch and maybe not even the same sandstone, although weathering and a slightly different amount of iron are the reasons behind the darker color. At second glance, I’m also noticing the Swiss cheese holes spread throughout that appear to correlate to different epochs.

Little fun fact: looking for information regarding different layers and how and when they were laid down, I discovered a word that’s new to me: chronostratigraphy. Wikipedia describes chronostratigraphy as the branch of stratigraphy that studies the ages of rock strata in relation to time. The ultimate aim of chronostratigraphy is to arrange the sequence of deposition and the time of deposition of all rocks within a geological region and, eventually, the entire geologic record of the Earth.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Three blind mice meet seven wandering antelope.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Those petroglyphs were seen in this crevice on the right. Damn it, I was trying to avoid my inner-teenage mind that filters far too much through an immaturity I can’t seem to shake, even approaching the cusp of 60 years old. It is my genuine hope that knowing that no one could possibly get through the preceding 2600 words of this post and still be reading at this point of the story, so throwing caution to the wind, I’m just going to put this out there. I don’t know about you, but to me, there’s something a bit vulvic/backsideish about this image; seriously, that’s why I even took this photo. If I lost some credibility with this, you don’t really know me. Then again, if someone is reading this in the year 2322, I’ll have to assume that you couldn’t have ever known me. And if someone says this is disrespectful of Diné culture, I’d say meh and argue that minds in the gutter are a normal part of life.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Now that I’ve said all there is to say, assuming I can recover from comparing rocks to genitalia, I should probably just stop right here. I’m groaning myself by now but what would you do after writing more than 13,000 words to 164 photos with only 44 hours left until you leave on your next trip? You, too, might be loopy by now. Compound that with this being the last 12 hours of a 5-day fast, and I’m a recipe to be relieved of a keyboard and any attempt at making sense. I should just hit the backspace key at this point because if I know anything, it’s that I don’t think anyone would want to read this far to listen to my lament, my whining, my poor excuse at trying to explain why I’m not really adding anything of value to the narrative.

Okay, breaking out of that miasma of thought, I introduce you to a cave-dwelling tucked on high over some spectacularly angular petrified dunes that are not very well represented by this photo at all. Go see it for yourself is my advice.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Cleavage.

Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Oh yeah, I forgot that this wall of photos features another view of the mishmash of angles that were petrified in such an impossible way. If I were smart and still full of energy to continue this story, I’d return to MiniMeGeography and find out how it’s explained to children.

Caroline Wise in Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

Are we outta here yet? Soon, we are heading back to the Jeep that is somewhere out there. I think I have as many grains of sand in my boots as I’ve gathered impressions today. This has me thinking about how when we’ve been hiking in fine sand, and our feet are sweaty, we rub our toes together to feel the stony little granules as though we could measure the amount of sand that is down in there by the intensity of feelings. When we finally get somewhere to whip off our boots and strip off the socks to inspect our feet,  we look at our toes and the mud ring that outlines them, and I, for my part, am kind of impressed. Then, without abandon, we shove our fingers between our toes and try dislodging the red/tan/ or brown paste that’s probably collected a bit of sock fuzz in it before shaking out our socks with satisfaction, knowing comfort is about to return. Well, that’s where I go; your results may vary.

Monument Valley in the distance as seen from Mystery Valley on the Arizona Utah State Line

And with this last photo looking back towards Monument Valley, our Memorial Day trip is coming to an end.

We’ve been driving south for some time now. My hope of finding some roast mutton on this adventure never came to fruition, so we had stopped in Kayenta at the seemingly most popular fast food joint on Navajo Lands, good old reliable Church’s Fried Chicken. Sitting in the parking lot gobbling down our hot lunch, a nearby rez dog we mistook for being dead meandered over, looking starved. That sad old animal was the beneficiary of a lot of crust, skin, and a sizable amount of meat as it stared at us with tears of loneliness in its eyes. Guilt is a powerful weapon when used against the sympathetic.

Well, here it is, the end of the trail. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, as we had designs on another night out, this one in Flagstaff. The idea was we’d avoid the grueling drive home to Phoenix on Memorial Day weekend because that’s always nothing shy of awful. Not this time, as we’ve already been witnessing, fear of recession, the effects of inflation, and high gas prices are keeping people at home. Covid already stole their time of enjoying the world, and now they’re giving more of it away to sequester themselves in their caves. So it goes, the cows don’t miss any of them anyway.