(no subject)
How do I describe this place that breathes warm air into my soul?
***
Before any of the intensity of falling on gear and air wretching began, day one had all the happy buzz of a classic road trip. Wearing sunglasses and bucket hats, we drove the secondary highway towards the scenic Indian Creek corridor. Sagebrush and sunflowers waggled in roadside greeting. Sturdy calves darted out of the way. The I-pod sang an appropriate tune:
There’s nothing in between,
What we are,
What we see,
And we'll be freeeeeeeee.
- Free, Donovan Frankenreider
Soon, stellar orange buttresses begin to rise up around us as we descended into the basin and range lands of the Indian Creek corridor. This scenic byway abuts the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park in Southern Utah. The land is not part of the park itself; rather, it is under the lowly control of the overburdened and underfunded Bureau of Land Management. Yet there is such rich history here, from petroglyphs to rare desert flora-- and for us climbers, it is a splitter crack climbing paradise.
This corridor was once home to the Anasazi Indians, hunters and gatherers before 1300 A.D. These indigenous peoples collected nature’s offerings of rice grass and pine nuts, storing them in stone granaries which resemble the top of a homestead well with a cover to keep this food safe and dry all winter long. The Anasazi built shelters in the sides of the cliffs: piling up rocks, spackling together mud, carving out hollows. Mesa Verde is their best known work, but small serendipitous discoveries of their past presence in Indian Creek delight me when I round a corner of the buttress without expectation.
They were the continent’s first climbers, scampering up the sides of these cliffs to their shelters long before the C4 Stealth Rubber™ and sexy red Cowdura™ of my new-school climbing slippers were ever invented.
Later on, in the early 1900’s, sadly, this basin and range land became a natural corral for the largest commercial cattle grazing operation in the country. Today, a much smaller ranch still operates in its place, yet signs of overgrazing still scar the landscape. Outlaws, too, once found places to hide their stolen horses and goods in the labyrinthine side canyons.
Me? I come to test my mettle on the sandstone cliffs. Like the Indians, I have pressing work to complete before snow blankets stone and the long winter falls. I don’t want to be sentenced to months of tantalizing dreams of that hand jam that was just out of reach.
***
A slideshow of Indian Creek. For better viewing hit "expand to full size".
***
To be continued...