Day 2: Bryce Canyon

A chime from Heather’s phone woke us after little more than four hours of sleep. With exhaustion still clouding my mind—I couldn’t imagine how Heather felt after driving until 2:00 am—I knew adrenaline and my excitement for our day at Bryce Canyon would have to sustain me. Thankfully, I had an ample supply since our first experience of the park would be from the back of a horse.

Going into my senior year in college with a physical education credit still to be fulfilled, I decided to be bold and try my hand at horsemanship, even though the only experience I had in balancing entailed sliding down hand rails around campus. The first Wednesday evening of our class, I boarded a college van, and we were taken up to the pasture where the horse barn and arena stood. Our instructor showed us past a dozen stalls occupied by snorting horses to the tack room for riding shoes, (I found some oversized rubber mucking boots that would do) and then, I was introduced to a reddish chestnut named Gus who would be my partner for the semester.

Our relationship proved to be complicated. Gus exhilarated me with each walk, trot, and canter we did around the arena; I couldn’t believe I could obtain college credit for learning to ride an animal. At other times, I would be miffed when I failed to assert my dominance over Gus. I might request a turn to the left by gently squeezing my right knee into his side as I had been instructed, but immediately, we would trot right. At the end of each class, our teacher’s assistant told me I would learn in time; after all, she said, Gus was perfectly capable of following instructions if they were given correctly.

Despite our occasional disconnect, I came to feel a bond with Gus by the end of the semester. Every evening after lessons, we were asked to groom our horses; so, I would enter his stall and use a rubber curry comb to rub his hair in small circles, starting at his angular neck and moving back over his powerful girth. Sometimes, Gus squashed me against a wall as I did this, but once in a while, he would look at me and press his cheek against my hands while I broke up the dirt enmeshed in his neck from the ride. Horsemanship was not easy, and I doubt I could place in a horse-riding competition faster than I could slide down bannisters, but if you look up the senior picture I chose for the yearbook once the class had finished, you will find a photo of me in a lumberjack flannel standing beside Gus and giving him a scratch under his neck.

A month after I had left the horse barn and my townhouse for the last time and departed western New York for my home in Virginia, I was busily working through the logistics of our trip when a scene appeared fully formed in my mind: Heather and me riding through the wilderness on sturdy steeds like cowboys of old. An excellent idea! I thought. I knew I was out of practice and was worried about the chafing I was sure to experience on a half-day ride, but nothing could quell my joy as the time for our ride approached and Heather sped through the red rock pillars and arches of Dixie National Forest on our way to Bryce Canyon. We were almost ten minutes late, so as soon as we pulled into a parking spot, Heather and I hurried toward the historic lodge where we would meet our group. Unfortunately, someone at the information desk told us that our fellow riders had already assembled and left for the stables.

Afraid our $160 payment might become a donation to the local outfitter, Heather and I exited the lodge and ran through a forest of Ponderosa Pines toward the stables. As we approached, I spotted a cluster of people standing in front of several guys in chaps and plaid shirts talking about how to hold the reins. Relieved, we casually joined the throng and caught our breath. During the debrief, my eyes alighted on a stump in front of me on which a bottle of spray sunscreen stood. I looked at Heather as it dawned on me: We had forgotten to lather up earlier, and now we were about to be completely exposed to the summer sun of southern Utah until noon. I silently thanked the person who had left it behind and discreetly picked it up to spray a few of its remaining drops onto my neck and face before passing it on to Heather.

The cowboys herded us into the nearby corral, and a fellow in a black felt hat introduced me to Nettie, a beautiful chestnut with a white star on her forehead who would be the buffer between me and the innumerable cliffs on our ride. I put my left foot into the stirrup and swung my right leg over her back; that, I remembered how to do. Heather was paired with a mahogany bay named Echelle, and before I knew it, my hips began swaying right and left in a steady, familiar rhythm as our guide directed our horses out of the corral. Up to this point, pines had surrounded us, and my focus had been entirely set on getting onto the back of a horse by 8:30. Now, I noticed a drop-off in the distance which was gradually drawing nearer, and all at once, the trees disappeared, and our trail of horses arrived at a panorama of rocky spires and chalky ridges as if we were looking out over a city dense with cathedrals. This was Bryce Canyon.

As we descended into the gorge, stone pillars known as hoodoos appeared all around us, each looking as if a stack of gigantic reddish sugar cubes had been subjected to blowing rain, dissolving their sharp edges into organic, flowing shapes. Yet, despite the onslaught of the natural forces of erosion, they still stood sentinel. Nettie led me along trails cut into the limestone walls and then out among more precarious ochre rock structures rising from the eroding canyon. At times, I had the sensation that I was witnessing the effects of an atomic blast, but my surroundings enchanted more than unnerved. Formations along our path had been given names that referenced subjects like chess or ancient mythology, and the trails we passed through had whimsical titles such as Queens Garden and Peekaboo Loop. The evolving scenery mesmerized me as we rounded each bend, but enjoying the sights required me to ignore more local concerns.

As soon as I had scrambled onto Nettie’s back, I found myself sitting on a saddle with little cushioning. Probably, the saddle (and Nettie) was well-worn after having borne the weight of trail riders for many seasons, but that fact didn’t make the grinding of my pelvis against this would-be marble countertop any more bearable. Not long into the trip, I tried to energize the muscles in my buttocks by squeezing them in synch with Nettie’s steps, but then I felt her slipping on pebbles gracing the edge of a steep incline we were treading. Worried, I informed our group leader. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Nettie doesn’t have a death wish any more than you do.” The members of our group laughed just before our team broke into a trot down a descent, silencing us as we tried to hold on.

After a full morning of horses and hoodoos, our trip broken up only by a short bathroom stop at a pair of steamy long-drops, we dismounted our steeds back in the corral and thanked our guide for introducing us to the usually unseen and unfelt treasures of Bryce Canyon. On the way out, we even found photographs for sale that were taken of each us during the ride. Mine must have been snapped early on in our journey: I was sitting straight-backed and confident on my mare, and I could tell by my smile the pain hadn’t yet set in. I couldn’t resist purchasing the portrait to immortalize the trip in a scrapbook when I returned to Virginia.

Now that we were back on our feet, I recalled a suggestion Heather had made a few hours before: “After the trail ride, we can go back to the room to shower and rest for a bit if you want,” she had said. Now that I was no longer frozen in a straddling position and could move my arms and legs normally, I became aware of a good reason to accept her offer: dust. The layers of grit and grime now on my body reminded me of the grubby antiques in Disney World’s Haunted Mansion. Even the hue of my ocean blue shirt had been dulled to a faded periwinkle. Dust also clung to Heather’s hair, transforming her ponytail into what now appeared to be fledgling dreadlocks. In spite of our more than questionable hygiene, however, we chose to make the most of the time we had in Bryce and headed over to a geology talk held on the canyon rim. Afterward, we drove toward the southern end of the park. I spent the car ride keeping my arms raised from my sides and my fingers separated from one another to avoid touching my own filthy skin by accident.

When the road dead-ended, Heather and I parked and walked to Yovimpa Point. We were twenty miles south of the main amphitheater, and from the overlook, a vast, verdant landscape illuminated by the afternoon rays spread out before us. Far in the distance, I could just make out a large crack in the earth which widened the farther south it went. Could that be the Virgin River descending into Zion Canyon? I wondered, thinking about the next day’s destination some fifty miles away.

The openness of the land amazed me. Near my home, the farthest you can see is five or six miles down the Rappahannock River if you stand in the right place on the shore. Here, from the vantage point of a small mountain, you could see much farther; at other times on our trip, the roads we would take were so straight and flat, you could find yourself driving right into someone’s headlights for miles.

After half an hour, we headed north again but this time in search of the Mossy Cave Trail, a lesser known and not-so-strenuous hike I had come across in one of the guide books at Barnes & Noble. (I had originally planned on tracking down a field which purportedly contained prairie dogs, but a ranger at the lodge told us it was farther away than we were willing to go to see local fauna.) Passing the main canyon, we located the trailhead, and our evening was spent strolling beside a glassy creek flowing over rose-colored rocks. A half-mile upstream, we came upon the namesake cave which made its modest contribution to the creek with water that had seeped into the limestone overhead; at the top of the alcove, the droplets were forced out of the permeable rock and trickled down to the bottom of the cave where swaths of moss imbibed some and let the rest continue to the creek. To our right, a small waterfall deepened the shallow riverbed, and a family waded in the refreshing water far away from the crowded amphitheater.

Back down the trail, I knelt beside a modest bridge and sunk my hand into the water to feel the cold, pure element encapsulate my fingers. There, Heather and I gazed at the multitude of soft stones varying from off-white to deep-red against the sand before heading back to the car. I hoped to see some of the animals that make this nook of Bryce Canyon home along the way, but they eluded me. Returning to Mossy Cave a few years later, however, I would have my chance when a rattlesnake meandered across the path in front of us.

The golden sky melted into lavender as the sun set, and Heather and I left the secluded trail for an astronomy talk in the Bryce Canyon Lodge. The wooden, vaulted community room was past capacity when we arrived, so I sat cross-legged on the floor, once more trying to avoid feeling any part of my dirt-encrusted body. I was definitely overdue for sleep and a good scrubbing, and the warm, pine-sap-scented surroundings attempted to lull me onto my side. But, as our speaker began his presentation and displayed pictures of galaxies and constellations, I perked up. The area around Bryce Canyon, he told us, is one of the darkest places in the United States, partly because the surrounding community partners with the National Park Service to minimize light-pollution. This means on a typical night, barring clouds, of course, the heavens divulge all their glory to anyone caring to take a look. I marveled at the photos on the screen, and when the talk concluded, our presenter invited us to head over to the visitor’s center a few miles away; within the hour, telescopes would be set up for viewers to see some of the universe’s jewels. Even though my head felt like a bowling ball wanting desperately to fall onto a pillow, I agreed with Heather that we should stop by for a few minutes.

That night, in a parking lot converted into an outdoor observatory, we gazed at orbs the color of the Hope Diamond and whimsical whirls set into the blackness far, far away from us. They appeared small enough to be molecules under a microscope, but rather, we were spying on gargantuan infinities over a great vastness no one could ever cross. I stood there in the chill of an evening in early July while Heather took her turn. I looked around me, past the group of star-gazers at the silhouettes of trees, at the pulsing sky, at the vistas already freeze-framed in my mind that were so different than those at home, and finally at the scenes inscribed in my memory that I often took for granted, the fields and rivers and pastures I passed every day in Virginia without really seeing.

By the time we returned to our $40 motel room and I had cleaned my arms and face, I lay down with dust that wouldn’t wash away: images of rusty towers and glowing planets and rough rocks made smooth by a gentle flow.