Love and Happiness

15 October, 2012

Drinks Canyon

Moab, Utah

“Take only photos. Leave only footprints.”  John Muir

I would never have seen the sheep were it not for Kaya.  I had just thrown a lump of moldy cheese into the river and noticed she was fixated in that direction.  I, of course, thought she was after the cheese, and cut her a slice of the fresh stuff to distract her.  When Kaya can’t be lured into a different mode with cheese, something is amiss.

The Bighorn Sheep once ruled the slopes of Utah, roaming herds climbing the ragged slopes with finesse, well beyond the fancy of predators.  According to the literature from the Arches National Park, just over the rim of cliffs above this slope, they now number around 50. I was initially disappointed because they seemed small, until I considered that I was looking across the Colorado River from the campsite, and they were about one-tenth of a mile away.  I have seen a couple of skulls around town, and the term “sheep” strikes me as inappropriately diminutive and milquetoast.

Of course I sprinted for the truck to grab the ipad and make a movie.  Though I got some footage, about 12 minutes, between the human handheld factor, the tenth of a mile, the preliminary development of the camera, the one-sixteenth of an inch dimension of the aperture.…I’m sure you see where I’m headed with this.

Yes, a ram might be a more fitting word. And this ain’t no motherboard.  They proved to be a ram and a ewe and by the time the footage was stabilized by leaning the ipad against the water pitcher, they were a couple.  I was wondering why they were running around and around this large boulder, and thought I saw one ride the other down one side of it, and had to look again.  I think she may have been saying that she might like to have coffee first, maybe ease into the morning, but far be it from me to counsel another’s domestic predilections.

The river was quiet this morning as I coerced the laptop back into play to write about it, and over its whispering burble I could hear their hooves clattering on the stone known as Moab Tongue.  The river changes as frequently as the appearance of the landscape and became loud and vehement Friday morning after a preview of a thunderstorm came and went in a neighborhood near us.   I could see the lightening flashing and flickering in a canyon upstream that was obviously not spared the deluge.  The Colorado went from green to brown that day, and it is only today, Tuesday, approaching a verdant tone again.  It still is more opaque than my memory of how it appeared Thursday when we arrived, after what I can assure the reader will be our last night in a motel.

Kaya and I returned to Negro Bill Canyon yesterday to locate the leash we left up near Morning Glory Arch on Sunday, and I was filled with a sense of Déjà vu all over again.  Sunday morn had found your humble scribe not feeling too hot, three days without a real shower, head scraped repeatedly from hitting the top of the door into the cap on truck, a repetitive ritual. If I would only take the flipping hat off, and wear it like a catcher or a drummer, I would see it and avoid further injury. We’d partied a bit the night before, in good, earnest Saturday Night tradition, well free of those restraints that most people would consider creature comforts.  

I was careful to bring water and a long-sleeved shirt, and keep an eye on the Kay’, as this was our first extended foray into the desert, at the peak hour of solar noon.

Editor’s note:  Pause to put more fuel on the fire, not quite ready to begin the huevos revueltos con pimientos, salchichones y queso, as the written word has taken me again.

Ennywhoo…the darkling mood went the way of the honest politician as soon as we were out of sight of the parking area, and never returned.  The sheer glory of the grandeur of the canyon, the penstemon still in bloom, the scrub oaks, the lizards and cactus, the gnarly Bonzai Junipers in their timeless endurance, graying and bending with the winds, the ever-alluring surprise around the next bend….hog heaven would founder in the arena of Devil’s Garden.

But back to yesterday:  We had begun the day at our favorite Moab laundry, charging batteries, shaving, listening to Frenchmen get excited in their skype connections to loved ones and home.  We had needed some sundries for breakfast, and this guaranteed a late departure into the canyon, though I had wanted to see why the Arch was named Morning Glory.

In town, Kaya likes to socialize with all of God’s Creatures, and we met a full-bred Akita, Kaya’s half-brethren, to oversimplify.  He was a beautiful white, fifty percent larger than she, hair three times as long, and they exchanged a civil, albeit undignified discourse as his mistress explained she had just lost a dog who greatly resembled mine.  She was walking him with her husband, who was walking a red chow cross, and as I didn’t have the omnipresent ipad, I didn’t get a photo of him until driving, later, a sloppy through-the-windscreen moving piece that deteriorates into the steering wheel, the lap , and ultimately darkness at high noon.

We have aspirations of making the Squaw Flats Campground at Needles, near The Maze, on the southern end of Canyonlands National Park by checkout time, as campsites are first-come first-serve, and if we blow it, we’ll probably find ourselves in the backcountry camping without a permit.  The peril here is not a ranger issuing a citation, but rather that issued by the Spotted Rattlesnake, a nocturnal, friendly fellow who seeks out warmth on cool desert nights.

“It’s just something you know is right, even if it’s wrong.”

  

Andre Leon Talley, speaking of film noir in the October 16, 2012 Moab Sun News.