45.) View Spoiled....Vast Upheaval....Whale Rock....

     I land in Canyonlands National Park the next morning, my first stop is the section of the park known as The Island in the Sky. The wide open view, hundreds of miles of undeveloped land is reassuring to me; in that we, as people, haven't had a chance to ruin everything….yet. But I think I’m becoming a bit spoiled when it comes to viewpoints and overlooks.  The view over the canyon lands is gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, it’s the establishing shot in a old western flick, and when the heavy mist settles into the canyons obscuring everything except the flat toped bluffs, its easy to see where the name Island in the Sky came from; but after spending so much time at the Grand Canyon so recently, it’s less emotionally jarring than it would have been had I come here first. I still find it somehow soothing though.

It’s nearly a 2 mile round trip on the White Rim Overlook Trail through the familiar desert scrub brush. It leads me to a cliff’s edge at very tip of a peninsula that juts out over the desert floor hundreds of feet below. I look out and realize that I’m now standing on part of the island in the sky. The rock formations are different than the ones I saw in the Grand Canyon. Towers, spires, pinnacles, whatever you want to call them look small from here, but the tallest actually tops out at 305 feet.

From where I stand I can picture a downpour of rain and the runoff it creates flowing down the hillsides and how all that water, over billions of years, would result in the landscape I’m looking at now, and once again think about the time it takes to create something as magnificent as this.  The vastness of the place, in terms of physical size of course, I can see for hundreds of miles, but also the vastness of the timeline you need to grasp when considering the creation of a place like this. That’s why the desert makes us feel small and insignificant….maybe. That feeling can be soul crushing, paralysis inducing, nothing I do matters so why bother doing anything at all.  That’s the thought most people, myself included come to, but upon further inspection I think it can be sort of liberating.  There are forces in the world that are bigger than you, stronger than any of us. They are going to continue regardless of your, or my, level of involvement. There is literally nothing we can do about it so why burden yourself with the negative thoughts and just do what you please. 

     I was listening to an old George Carlin stand up routine recently where he says that people are arrogant when they talk about how we have to save the planet and I think he makes a valid point. The planet has been here for billions of years, it’s going to be fine. We’ll be gone, no doubt, but the planet will live on. It will take its time and slowly heal from all the terrible things people have done to it and it may no longer be habitable by humankind, but the planet will be fine. No one really cares about the planet, it’s themselves their trying to save. Sometime, when destruction of environment reaches a critical mass, and it become too ruthless to sustain human life, we will slowly die off. The human race will probably be able to survive , limping along on life support for hundreds of years, but eventually we’ll all be gone, and THAT is what will ultimately Save The Planet.  

Holy shit, I got a little existential on ya there for a second. Weeks alone in the desert will do that to a man's brain. I think I’ve mentioned that before, but weeks alone in the desert also takes a toll on a man’s memory. I apologize for the digression. 

     Lets get back to two and a quarter miles on the Upheaval Dome Overlook Trail. The sign at the trailhead says “Dome” but it’s actually a crater, and science isn’t quite sure how it was formed. Could it have been a meteor? A prehistoric sea? A collapsed salt dome?  These are the best guesses science has offered up so far, but still no proof to its formation. I manage to pull myself up the trail to the crater's rim where I plop down to admire another view and munch on a Cliff Bar.

    It’s a short 1 mile round trip to the crest of Whale Rock.  I don’t even bring my gps or water on such a short hike and almost immediately, I regret it. This one is another trail that mostly transverses the huge red boulders that are so abundant in this part of the country. Maybe a scraggily little bush here or there, clinging to life from a small crack. Windblown sand finds refuge in shallow depressions, but the rest is just bare rock. So with no worn path to follow I’m once again using those rock cairns for navigation. My lack of water provides an extra anxiety when I can’t seem to find them anymore. I stand in one spot and turn, 360 degrees, eyes locked onto the rough stone surface and see nothing. Uh oh……I take a few cautious steps in the direction I believe the trail was headed before I lost sight of it. Over a crest in the rock I finally set eyes on the next cairn and the crisis is quickly averted.

 

     It’s unsettling how quickly you can find yourself in a dire situation like that in the desert, especially if you're alone, and in this case without water. It could be something as simple as a twisted ankle or a skinned knee getting infected. Stuck out in the desert alone, you got a real problem on your hands. As of this particular moment however, I’ve got no problems other than a greying sky that’s threatening to storm by turning up the wind.

     Rain holds off long enough for me to do the half mile loop passed Mesa Arch. The name is apt seeing as its nothing but flat desert as far a I can see, in all directions. Eventually I can see where the desert just drops away and from there the arch peaks just up over the edge of the mesa. As I get closer I’m able to look through it to canyon floor hundreds of feet below. It’s a different orientation than the other arches I’ve seen so far and makes for a decent photo op. With the storm nearly upon me now I retreat to a nearby highway rest stop to crash for the night in the Jeep. Along the way I keep stealing glances in my rearview to see the sunset. The clouds mesh with the skyline of cliffs on the horizon and I can't differentiate between the earth and the sky, they have become one.