There is a fast way and a slow way to get places, but at this point of the road, there is only one way and that is through Hell’s Backbone. This amazing road snakes atop a ridge that traverses across a dreadful canyon, two canyons in fact, one on each side of the spine upon which the road balances precariously as a tight rope. In some places, the drop on the right would be just as bad a way to get to hell itself as the drop on the left, both plummeting without barriers unto the sharp rocky crags below. Peeking down swiftly, not more than a moment’s glance, rewards the traveler with the lush greenery produced by a creek so small and beautiful that it is impossible to believe that it would have carved such a place. More and more, dangerously playing with destiny perhaps, tourists have widened the scant shoulder until there is no edge to the shoulder before it drops. Driving feels eerie through here, stopping seems suicidal, although of course stopping anywhere is much safer than moving at any speed. But somehow it feels as though moving on through the spine of the ridge is the only way to safely cross. And so move on we do.

Descending off the ridge is perhaps even more astounding, as the road winds clinging to the edges of the cliff and time and again completely changes directions in order to safely scamper down to the inevitable valley below, sometimes doubling right under itself to do so. Needless to say the views are breathtaking from the obligatory “vista points” that call motor homes to the sides of the road. At one point, the claim is that on a clear day you can indeed see forever—forever in this case being defined as a three-hundred mile unobstructed view of the North rim of the Grand Canyon itself. Factual accuracy of the actual distance is unimportant here, the crucial truth is that an artist could spend the rest of his life in an inadequate attempt to show the rest of the world what there is to see here.

The landscape here is already a woodcut, light and shade well defined at any time during the day, be it by the sharp short shadows of the high noon sun or the elongated soft shade provided by the rising or setting star. Shapes of rock formations and rugged vegetation draw themselves upon the craggy landscape making me yearn for a block of cherry wood and a carving knife–and time. Instead I must commit all this to memory, desperately trying to indelibly carve the panorama into my brain, and knowing with a sad helplessness that I never can. Which is why I snap a half roll with my single-shot, really a marvelous instrument serving to jog my memory later. The blissful feeling of this unusually rugged scene I will have no trouble recreating.

The ribbon that is the road capriciously twirls around among sandstone formations and bristlecone pines, each having taken to get to their present state a thousand years or more. Soon another valley, this one fertile with farmland and green as a Kansas farm in the spring, but contrasting sharply with the red and barren surroundings, a telltale sign of modern irrigation methods. And shortly after that, time and road passing at the inevitable rate of sixty seconds per minute and sixty miles per hour (respectively), we approach what we have come to call “our mountain.”

You are wondering by now how long this all takes, probably. As I started to write this travel diary I thought I would be quite finished by now, but following the road in my memory uncovers details that I find difficult to leave out. Perhaps when all is said and done this diary would be best left to take the reader, a traveler in his own right, to an unknown place and time. But for those who need the anchors that time and place offers or those adventurers that may want to recreate the journey, I feel I owe some markers, torn as I may be between keeping this journey a fantasy only to be read in fiction, and begging that others partake in the experience. In any case, my fingers keep on typing and I see that I must put a time line onto the previous passages. We left Las Vegas at 7:00 a.m. give or take a minute, traveling North on Interstate 15, passed through the Virgin River Gorge at about 9:00 (“ish” could be indiscriminately added to any and all of these precise time-markers). At around 10:30 we left the comfort and boredom of the Interstate and headed up Cedar Breaks, out to Highway 89, on to Utah 14, then 12, oh heck! find your own route! We met Larry and his brother Darrell at nearly the noon hour. After our hot dog project was completed we tip-toed through Hell’s Backbone around 1:30 and arrived at the very top of our mountain approximately at 2:30. But I am now ahead of myself, as I have not yet described the ascent to Boulder Mountain—name given by the locals.

*****

Changing terrain is a telling sign that one is either climbing a mountain, descending to a valley, or simply covering a lot of miles. Our mountain stands proudly in the midst of desert lands, only seven and some short hours from home. We often, every time, in fact, speak of coming here to spend some time camping and hiking, although we have yet to do so. We have lunched here, dined as well, and even stopped at the hummingbird ridden visitor’s center to purchase beautiful books on the areas surrounding this island in a desert sea. Aspen and pine border the curves, as do deer and cattle, which we have never failed to see on a drive through. A look over my shoulder and I screech to a stop to catch in my viewfinder the road behind us as it seems to drop off into the abyss below just beyond that curve.

Obligatory again is a stop at the view point from the top, offering us the vast expanse of the lands below (we call this “parlez-vous-point,” as there are often French tourists partaking in the visual drenching). Again the North rim of the Grand Canyon, although by far not the most spectacular of the features to focus on, stands in the distance. Between it and us, mesas, valleys, rivers, forest covered mountains, layers and layers of lands, bluer in the far distance, red, mauve, orange and rust toward the near, green in the valleys and the meadows below—a feast to even the hardest to please or the most seasoned traveler. Mountains frame the entire view, in their flat mesa form toward the North and East where we are heading, and in their more natural chain of peaks toward the South and West, from whence we came. The Colorado carved its way through the middle of the landscape and when I have successfully recorded this scene with a camera, I had to put together six pictures side-by-side with the resulting collage disappointingly inadequate when compared with the actual panorama. This is the kind of view that has to be committed to memory, each and every time adding detail until the ample expanse remains tucked neatly inside our brain. But I seem to be off the road thing a bit, so I will get back to that.

This particular road just traverses the mountain, perhaps in a direct way although only in direction, not in actual straightness. As every mountain road, it must wind and curve finding a safe path through without erring off into the valleys below. Again the next curve asks gently to follow its course, requesting that we invariably slow down to assure a successful turn, only to ask again, at the next bend. And invariably what goes up must, by the laws of nature, come down, and the mountain is merely a luscious gift between desert valleys, enchanting us with its sinuous curves, rocking us to a stupor as we strive to follow the calls...left...slower, slower, right...easy, easy, left...turn, turn, turn!...right...that’s it, that’s it...left...

Quickly as it came upon us, the mountain is gone. Descending again, the road once more straightens and rushes by brush full rocky canyons, carved by the furious path of a flash flood—inevitably and curiously dry. Afternoon lethargy befalls upon us but somehow we must go on, even as we think where we will stop at the end of the day, the roads and the future beckon again to continue—seemingly there really is no other choice. Ahead lies another gift, even more beautiful and precious than anything else, perhaps there always is such a place to the grateful observer. And with these thoughts full of promise, we plunge ahead.

*****

Also at this point and time we often joke about having been already exposed to an excess of beauty, knowing that much much more lies ahead and wondering if a beauty overdose may perhaps be harmful to one’s health. And just about at that time, we enter into the magical world of Capitol Reef National Park, a gem to behold, a true oasis in a wasteland of badlands.

The least visited national park in the U.S. offers us first the awesome sight of the Capitol Reef itself, I’m sure “a big rock” to some, but a tantalizing temple to refresh my tired eyes. In the afternoon, driving away from the sun, rock formations shine with a strange and fiery glow projecting shadows far from their feet and turning the world into an eerie red and black...woodcut print, of course! Light and dark phantasmagoric forms spread over the red earth with the dwindling afternoon light above reward us as we rush by into the cozy boundaries of the park.

Once inside the park the reward is that of history, settlers who left cabins and native peoples who left their mysterious drawings and markings on the walls of the canyon passage. Fruit trees, planted once by the settlers, call our attention and ask us to identify them–apples, peaches, perhaps apricots? Native peoples left their marks here, painted on the walls of the canyons, seemingly out of the reach of a human hand. Yet there they are, goats and suns and symbols of days past, artwork of the ancients, mysteries of the people who called this place home. Where are they now?

I feel like an intruder yet I want to see more, to intrude more. We have stopped here sometimes, always wanting to see more, to stop more. But it is in the wrong place, too early in the afternoon to stop for the night. We must merely pass by this place, respecting its history, enchanted again by the gurgling stream and its refreshing waterfalls. We must pass quickly, we think, so as not to offend the ones who lived here, once, and left their art for us to see. And pass we do, through the curving road flanked by beauty, on a one way crossing from desert to desert.

*****

Another oasis island behind, we progress through one of the most desolate parts of the drive. Names like Torrey and Hanksville may or may not give a reader an idea of the type of town we go through on our way to the canyon lands just where the Colorado meets Lake Powell. We have stayed there, and the hospitality is beyond reproach. The tiny towns in the middle of these lands are, however, sleepy and a bit eerie, after dark.

The road cuts through a weird wasteland of what looks like bare rock, but on closer inspection turns out to be soft sand–the kind perhaps regurgitated by an ancient volcano. In fact flanking the road are nothing but piles of white sand, black sand, just bare as anything, lifeless and naked. The road itself is an avenue here, a long and straight way connecting the sparse dots that give us gasoline, food, and–you know, a “rest stop.” In the distance, equally sparse mountains, one particular, Henry Mountain, beckons for a visit–some day. Others stand far away from the road, seemingly never having been visited before, just silhouettes against the deepening blue sky.

We fly through these parts, road and river (there’s a river giving life to a narrow stretch of all this wasteland) winding together, married for life. We rush through the desert because the road is straight and narrow and its end is far off and disappears in the distance and it calls us. We rush because we know the canyonlands will be set on fire by the setting sun and we want to see them before the dark desert night swallows them and robs us of the sight.

There is a stretch of a sixty miles from Hanksville to the curve that opens the road onto the bluest lake of them all. Bluest probably because of the contrast with the rust and red, but a sight to behold regardless of the psychological phenomena that explains why. Sixty miles seem to fly and then the sharp turns begin and gently take us down by the hand to the lake.

There are no words to adequately describe this blue lake painted in the midst of red lands. There is also not a woodcut that would do the view justice in just black and white, but the use of a deep and bright rust contrasted with indigo with swaths of sky blue might just begin to describe it. Shapes are capricious, lines non-existent, form and color are everything here and a blindfolded painter could sloppily paint in those colors any shape at all and know for a fact that the lake in the rocks would be appropriately rendered.

Both in and out of the lake crossings, the roads turn into stairways, sloping and descending first and ascending sharply once across the other side. Walls of canyon have been blasted here to allow our passage across the former Colorado river, now a vast lake covering hundreds of square miles of sandstone valley. Two bridges await, one over the Dirty Devil, another over the Colorado itself. No stopping, ever! No stopping on the bridges, order the signs before them even though stopping is just exactly what we want to do. Right there, right where we can’t, just so we can see the river going under us. Bridges are interesting features also, aren’t they? We build them to connect the paved network that connects us as a people. They are strong, made of steel and cable and concrete...yet they could be so fragile! And we trust them. We trust them to take us to the other side of what would be impassable.

*****

Nearly engulfed in a full sunset, we rush through the last miles of the day. I stopped twice in the middle of the road to take a picture, no one behind, no one ahead. Funny thing is, every time we cross through these parts the road seems empty. Are we the only ones that ever come this way? Surely they (they?) didn’t build this road just for us to make it to Kansas every summer... Yet there it is, empty and long, surrounded by canyons, natural bridges (a whole National Monument of Natural Bridges!), capricious sandstone formations with names like Cheesebox and Two Queens and Coyote Point and Indian Princess.

I would take a picture of the road at every turn here, so I must exercise extreme restraint upon that desire. I could spend a lifetime here and if I ever disappear from civilization, it is likely that I will be hiding out here, near one of those streams that carved one of those canyons that eroded and gave birth to one of those arches that frame the endless views. I simply watch the landscape go by, hypnotized by that distant curve, mesmerized by the road disappearing again and again past the horizon, in awe that I can see so far and that there is a road just over there. We follow.

Exiting the canyon lands is akin to going through one of Alice’s portals. How the world can change in a minute when we cross a portal! We start climbing, an act that tells us that we had been descending into these painted wonderlands. The road turns into a tunnel, nearly, climbing hard to reach the open mouth of the entrance. On both sides, walls of red rock as high and straight as buildings admonishing us forward, as does the sign that prohibits stopping. Once between them, stop I must, because behind me, between the dark rising cliffs, I see the shining road just traveled. A different perspective when looking back–a hint of a ribbon traversing wide and vast lands, curving with the capricious washes carved by the rivulets that speckle the valley below. Always a different perspective when one looks back, regretful almost–how could we have missed that view, how could we have passed by that canyon without ever giving a second look? Makes me feel like looking back a bit more often and tasting again the missed opportunities.

But not now, because now the day’s drive has finally taken a toll on all my senses and, drunken with the beauty just seen, I must stop. Head spinning and so full of scenery, of ideas for artwork, of promises to do more, to see more, to stop and go more, to go faster and slow down all at once, to travel again and again and again...

Blanding is a peaceful town with good food, gas and great motels. This time I met a native American who sold espresso coffee, but that story will not be told until the morning. Tonight, we stopped at some café to have a Navajo taco. It then dawns on us that we have lost an hour. “Lost an hour,” what a silly expression. Upon crossing the Utah border, we changed the time, as if by some given supernatural power we were now gods and were able to change time itself. Silly. Losing time does make me think of the times when we really waste time away, without realizing how precious and irreparably gone. Losing an hour makes me feel cheated, without thinking of all the other times when we sit in front of the television or play at our computers or get up late in the morning–really wasting time. This precious hour, which we will thankfully recover on the return journey, makes me think that I must not ever again waste another.

The road is gone now, wobbly feet walk us to the nearest café all the while seeming as if the world is still rushing by. Five hundred and some miles ago we filled up our coffee cups to embark on this journey. We are now not quite halfway, with twelve hours having passed. So many miles, all near the road. What lands lie between roads? How many of us will venture where the roads stop, far away from the pavement that is our lifeline? How much is there to see that we don’t see because we rush by? And how many lifetimes would it take to see it all, every mile of those five hundred, just a mile off the road on either side?
Long after stopping I am still uneasy about not having to keep the vehicle on the road, still wanting to follow the two white lines parted perfectly by the yellow lines, still queasy with speed, drunken with scenes gone by, yearning to have stopped more, wishing to have driven farther. Roads are truly a magic kingdom.

************
 
 

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