Here but by the grace of the gods

Just as soon as we stop, I’m out of the car and off towards the heights. We’re parked in a little campsite in canyonlands, Utah, alone save for a convoy of french tourists just here to fill up on water. On three sides stand massive cliffs, some shere, others sloped, and stepped so that you can follow ledges horizontally high up above the ground.

The sun is bright and hot. The air is dry. I find myself breathing hard - unusual for me, but at this altitude, away from my lush Washington forests, I must not be getting a much air as I’m used to. I crest the top of a lower ridge, shoeless by this point, and find a pool hollowed in the bottom of a massive hole.

Someone has carved footholds in the rock, and I clamber down. Sun slants down into the water and I wade in. It’s still cold, but not too cold. There are names scratched into the rock, a log of half burnt firewood floating in the water. It’s magical.

Climbing out again I find another pool at the highest point, and walk through it - my feet leaving five toed imprints against the stone. From here I can look down on the whole valley - endless scrubby desert trees and scrubbier desert brush laid out against the horizon. Cliffs rising around the campsite. Papa’s little car down below, and I can almost see him hidden behind a tree eating lunch.

Lunch sounds good. I make my way back down, scooting on my butt part of the way, preparing to take papa back up and show him the magical pools. I arrive, arrange bread and mayonnaise, and pickles and ham into a packaged form. Papa has finished.

“Did you find the magical pools?” he asks. Damn. I knew he’d been to this campsite before. I nod. He tells me about the last time he was here, when I was a baby. Mama put me to sleep and then climbed with him up to the top of that same ridge and they sat and talked in the moonlight late into the night.

Papa heads up to the same place I’ve just been as I finish my sandwich. I watch him and ponder. I rarely hear stories of that time. A couple with a new baby, still getting to know each other. She was twenty eight, just six years older than I am now, he was forty. Neither seem so very old now, as I consider having babies of my own. It’s a moment relatable in that I have lived it. Not here, but back home with other women. Now to imagine that in this story I was the baby they put to sleep.

The desert always gives me perspective.

---

“I’m going to try and get to the very top.” I tell Papa when he gets back. He bids me take a water bottle with me. I head up and follow a path I’d plotted from below.

I wind my way up, taking my time and resting in the shade, finally coming around the bend to the point hidden from below. There’s a cleft in the rock, and wedged into it two pieces of a tree, worn and white now. I set my water bottle and shoes aside and begin to climb. There’s a beauty to the way a human body is built for this. I wedge my body into the crevice, hands finding tiny places to hold. Using the trees as aids but never resting my full weight there.

And then I’m almost at the top. I try to pull myself over but there are no handholds. I wriggle my body around and try a different approach - nothing. It’s a puzzle, geometric with a body as the puzzle piece. I finally decide I’m going to have to climb fully onto the tree, realign myself, and step onto the ledge on the other side of it. From there I can clamber over.

I step out onto the tree, realign myself, and the world gives way beneath me. The tree slips free of its crevice. I fall, hands scrabbling to grab onto a branch that’s falling too. Then the tree catches and relodges itself four feet below where it had been.

There’s a second of sheer panic. I cling to the branch. I can’t breath. I’m going to die. Then in an instant it's gone. My head clears.

I become aware in that instant that I got no more than five hours of fitful sleep - we slept in the car at a rest stop - My decision making isn’t what it should be.

I also realize that I am fifty feet above the ground, and any fall will likely be my death.

Lastly I know that I have to get off this branch and get down. I slowly reach around and get a foot on a ledge, reducing my weight on the tree. I have nothing to hang onto with my hands but the branches, but there’s no helping that. I pause and breath. Consider that were I to put my full weight on the tree again I could probably get up, and decide that I am not qualified to make that risk assessment right now. All actions should be towards getting me to safety.

Slowly, foothold by foothold I make my way down. My arm is covered in blood where I scraped it, but I can’t feel any pain. When my foot hits to ledge where I began, I pause and breath again. Take a drink of water. Take a moment to pray.

From there it’s a slow careful descent. I detour out along a sheer drop to see if there are any safe ways up on the other side, but don’t find any. Twice I pause to pour an offering of water on the rocks.

---

“The way up would actually be there” I say, pointing to the far side of the valley where the cliffs slope down towards the road. “You could walk along the top all the way to the place I wanted to get to.”

Papa nods, taking a sip of water. I’m writing a letter, and he’s preparing to set off exploring again. He’s looking for gifts for the anima in his life, stones, sticks, bones - never one to give trinkets or flowers. I set out not long after him, heading down the road, then cutting off to the side to ascend the slope I saw from camp.

As I hit the top it’s beautiful. The sunset light is slanting off the red rock, radiating majesty. I have to pause and take a mental picture, closing my eyes then opening them. As I expected this side is an easy climb, nothing vertical, and only a few steep spots where I have to go to all fours.

Ontop, I pause to rebuild a cairn, replacing fallen rocks ontop and adding few extras of my own. Then I head in. It’ll be close getting all the way around and back before the sun sets, but I think I can do it.

Inward, onward. I begin to imagine that this is a pilgrimage to thank the gods for saving my life before. I will go and make offering at the spot I sought to reach, as it is the gods of that spot that spared me. I begin to pick up offerings. First the traditional three, then a fourth when a stone is too magical to pass up. I can’t leave four things, that would be wrong, so when I find the hollow of a tree to tuck a stone in, I do. Then there’s rock just looking for my magic leaf, and then there’s a stick that I have to pick up.

I continue on slowly, winding through clear spaces and - not fixing, nothing is wrong here, but bettering - wherever I can.

Here is a fallen cairn to be rebuilt. Here is a stone that would be happier shifted slightly to the side. Here is a tree that would like to keep my stick, and offers another in exchange. I begin to look at the world a little differently, an aesthetic eye, a listening of sorts, and try to leave this place better than I found it.

I am aware that I am destroying as I walk. My shoes are leaving deep imprints in the soil, that has been hardened by time. Deserts can erode because of footprints like these. I step on stones where I can. Take off my shoes and walk softly for a while, considering leaving them and coming back for them, but don’t in case from above I see a better way down. After a while I notice how much slower I’m going barefoot and put them on again. It is getting dim.

I’m half way around when darkness sets in. It’s a longer path than I had thought, made longer by lack of trails and the need to wind around bushes and trees. I keep coming to the edge of the cliff as it zigzags and I can’t see where it will be next. I occasionally backtrack, unable to walk along the edge.

But I can’t turn back. I’m halfway. I have to give thanks, and if I’m going to descend in the dark I might as well do so after I’ve accomplished my goal. I keep going, slower now. I have a stick that I hold in front of me. Do rattlesnakes come out in the dark? They’re cold blooded which makes me think not but . . .

A bear looms up in front of me. I raise my stick defensively before seeing it’s more bushlike nature. I bow to the bear bush and leave it a rock, and pass on. What about scorpions? Are there scorpions in Utah? It’s only a matter of time before I step on a cactus. They’re everywhere.

It’s completely dark by the time I get there. There’s a half moon glowing in the western sky. I build a cairn, sing, chant, pray, thank. In the end I leave one offering, a pebble I’ve had in my pocket the last year - the one I made a holograph of. It’s the most meaningful thing I have.

I’m wishing I brought water to offer as well.

Black between the low scrubby trees I begin to make my way back. Slowly, with my stick in front of me. Something rattles in front of me and I lash out with my stick in fear, but it turns out to have been a branch. I keep approaching cliff edges, and I stay as close to them as I can for the light.

I keep encountering bears, but there are other things too. A witch who offers me three wishes if I kill my loved ones. An old man crouched behind a rock. A silhouetted angel, wings outstretched who wants me to swear service. Another bear.

To each I bow and continue on. I have no offerings save my stick and I need that. It’s too dark to see things to pick up. I’m stumbling now, aware of what my feet are doing to the desert, but helpless to mitigate it.

I do consider spending the night up here. Papa would understand - but he wouldn’t sleep well. He’d worry. I’m confident in my capacity to get down. Better if I descend tonight.

I hit a cliff edge and kick a stone over, where it clacks on the stone far below, turn aside and continue on. Another witch offers me wings for my future wife. I refuse, bow, and carry on. What could I do with wings?

Another bear appears and I bow. I’m tired now. I can feel the injury in my arm now, and my ankles got scraped too. I keep thinking the next bend is the last stretch and it’s not. After five such last stretches I reach the last stretch. I kan see my cairn silhouetted against pale moonlight.

I leave my stick at the cairn. Thank the top gods for not having stepped on a cactus and beseech the cliff gods for a safe journey down. The slope is illuminated by the moon and I can see most of it, except for a few dark gaps below.

“You’re only allowed to go  towards places you can  see.” I tell myself aloud. Then I begin to descend. Slowly, carefully, testing each step to make sure I won’t slip. It’s a long tumble down.

Several times I find myself heading for dark areas and following my rule stay on track along the illuminated path. Looking back I’d see stone steepening into cliff and a twenty foot drop. I head straight for the road, but there’s a cliff there too I have to skirt, tossing rocks down until I find an area low enough for me to get down. Safe on the road I walk briskly towards our campsite, breaking into a run for a short while, then walking again.

And then about forty feet from our campsite, I slip on the gravely side of the road and tumble into the drainage ditch, slamming hard into pavement and gravel and adding several scrapes to my other arm. For a moment I lie there on my stomach getting back my breath, and then I begin to laugh.