A Weekend at Edward's...

"Do not jump into your automobile next June & rush out to the canyon country ... In the first place, you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the god-damned contraption & walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone & through the thornbush & cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail, you'll see something, maybe. Probably not. In the second place, most of what I write about in this book is already gone or going fast. This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial. You're holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock. Don't drop it on your foot — throw it at something big & glassy. What have you got to lose?"

— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire



The greater Moab area certainly doesn't belong to Edward Abbey, but his writings about it parallel my feelings pretty well. I spent last weekend in and around the Moab area sight seeing.

Friday I went for a hike through the fisher towers area. A climbing party happened to be rapelling a route called Ancient Art, and I stopped for a photo.



Like much of the desert, the Fisher Towers area is usually filled with complete silence. Silence so still it's quite loud in your ears. It's a silence that's rarely experienced anymore. We get used to the drone of the refrigerator, the low grade hum of the hot water heater. Even a home in the middle of nowhere isn't silent.

Coupled with the silence is the acoustics in the area. Climbers can talk in a normal tone of voice to hikers hundreds of feet away. You can hear the wing beats of a raven a few cliffs away.

I wanted to hit all my favorites, so in the afternoon I stopped by Dead Horse Point. The light wasn't flattering, but the scene was still sufficiently impressive.



After Dead Horse, it was a race out on Mineral Bottom Road to the Horsethief Canyon area. Much like Dead Horse only on a smaller scale, the Mineral Bottom area is really special to me due to the camping and flying I've done with friends in the area. I've been coming to the cliff since 2000. The best camping spot I know.



Walked out to the cliff with the dog to share a "sundowner" - We spent the last light enjoying the mirror finish on the Green R. and surrounding red rock cliffs.

After hiking back to the car, we decided to have a bit of a fire as camping parties had left quite a bit of firewood. We waited until the stars came out in the moonless sky before extinguishing the remaining flames and heading back toward town.



Like the silence, the stars are more profound in the desert. Far away from light pollution, the moonless sky lets you see deep into the universe. Constellations get lost among the more distant stars easily visible in the pure darkness. Don't stare too long though - you're liable to get lost in your own insignificance.