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Like many Coloradans, I suffer from a nasty Utah habit. This desert-crazed Durangoan has followed his personal addiction on all kinds of misadventures through the years.
Chasing the “real” desert, I’ve walked, driven and pedaled through thousands of miles of sand and over endless stretches of dusty washboard. I’ve traversed the Mussentuchit Badlands, set foot on the Moroni Slopes and even hiked in the vicinity of Cheesebox Butte, all in search of that fabled sandstone high. And I’ve nearly succumbed to temptation of trading in my green plate to become a Boulderite (a resident of Boulder, Utah, a funky burg perched perfectly on the edge of the Kaiporowitz Plateau).
I’ve also devoted plenty of time to wandering Utah’s main streams. During the last 9 years, Skyler’s desert-crazed Dad (yours truly) has spent many free weekends packing up the brood and pointing it for the family friendly shores of Moab. There, I’ve honed a love for knobby tires, watched my fourth-grader master the fine art of slickrock and grappled with the pain of being a tourist in a strange land (Q: How do you know it’s springtime in Moab? A: All of the license plates turn green).
So it came as no surprise two weeks ago when that call sounded yet again from the other side of the Zion Curtain. Tourist jabs be damned, I loaded the family back into the truckster and pointed it for that great beehive to the west. I should mention here that we were headed into a literal hot seat. The weekend forecast was ramping up into the three-digit zone, and Saturday promised to be extra spicy with 103 degrees on the docket.
“It’s official,” a good friend and recovering Utah addict told me. “You’re practically a Mormon now. Try to stay alive out there, and please don’t bring any sister-wives back home with you.”
Every addiction has its dark side, and my Utah fetish has repeatedly come at a price – whether it’s running the gauntlet of polygamy, shivering at the base of a dark canyon, last November’s broken hand and wrist, or overpriced pitchers of 3.2 swill. But I had a score to settle and ventured back last weekend partly to prove that this green plate doesn’t wither and fade away once May 1 hits.
And that’s how I found myself dozens of miles from the nearest climate control and asphalt as I took my final sip of water and watched the mercury cross that fabled 103-degree threshold. I’d pedaled my faithful steed deep into no man’s land and was suddenly feeling as prone as Warren Jeffs’ cellmate. The sun had cooked that exposed chunk of sand, stone and scrub to the point of parboil, and save for a few ants and a friendly swarm of biting gnats, I was the only living thing in the hardscrabble expanse.
My body was not reacting well to the treatment. The skin on my neck and arms had started to crisp, my parched tongue had taken on the consistency of dirty shag and I was still at least an hour of hard riding out. To make matters worse, I’d just flatted, and in the insult-to-injury department, I was wearing my wife’s bike gloves (an ensemble in shimmering aqua blue and laced with a flowery garnish). My gloves were happily parked back in Durango enjoying a temperate 88-degree day. But I persevered, completing my repair, ignoring my lack of wet stuff and climbing back onto my sizzling black seat, all the while dreaming of greener pastures.
Minutes later the first delusion hit. The flowery print on my new gloves appeared to be dancing. But I fought back and steered my consciousness elsewhere, fantasizing first about kidney-shaped swimming pools and then tripping into an imaginary convenience store’s giant refrigerated section. I could virtually see and feel the frosty glass lined with hundreds of multi-colored bottles, the dew dripping down their sides. The hallucination triggered an immediate physical response, and I reached for the hose of my hydration pack and gave it a suck. Instead of icy goodness, a warm blast of plastic-flavored air filled my water hole. With that I stowed the hose and turned off my mirage machine.
Having made the leap, I looked up and saw the end of the tunnel/golden ring/grand prize. For the first time in many years, I was where I wanted to be – out wandering through the naked desert. White sandstone hoodoos shot up from an undulating ancestral seabed. A jagged wash fell precipitously off the edge of the trail and tumbled hundreds of feet into a stone amphitheatre. Far off, the telltale signature of Delicate Arch betrayed itself and the La Sal Mountains rose precipitously in the east, still holding a few forgotten fields of the white stuff. Closer to home, a pair of lizards basked next to a secret stand of paintbrush, and a comfortable silence enfolded the whole affair. And then there was the heat – that beautiful soul-sucking, water-eating, tourist-slaying heat. Finally, I was back inside the desert’s true backdrop, and it was good to be the only green license plate (and only plate of any kind) at this trailhead.
I’m happy to report that I eventually made it to that convenience store, have been reunited with my bike gloves and am back with my fellow sinners in the great state of Colorado. Though I’m holding firm and have not made the leap into Mormonism, I’m pretty sure I saw some version of “god” out there that day (sorry but she was not sporting clay tablets or wearing a flowing white beard). And I won’t be surprised if I get called back to worship in Utah in the very near future. The real desert doesn’t show its face very often, and we’ve only got a handful of 100-degree days left.
– Will Sands
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