The challenge with a rooftop tent is that once I’m parked and I’ve deployed the tent, I’m hesitant to go through the hassle of packing it up, driving someplace, and then returning and unpacking it. This means that I’m pretty much reliant on my own two legs to get around once I’ve made camp.
My camping set up.
So this morning after a breakfast of coffee and cheese grits (you can take the boy out of Texas but not the Texas out of the boy), I walked the mile down to the visitor’s center to get the lay of the land and some recommendations for appropriate hikes for a semi out of shape 50 year old. In day light the juxtaposition of the orchards, barns, and horses against the red cliffs are even greater than I realized while driving in last night.
Because I don’t want to take my tent down and then set it back up, I’m somewhat limited in my options for hikes. Today I opted for Cohab Canyon, named after some intrepid Mormon settler. The guidebooks listed it as a moderate hike with a strenuous first quarter of a mile. The guidebooks lied.
The first quarter of a mile was pretty much 400+ feet straight up. Coming from the flat lands of West Texas, I’m the first to admit that I don’t have a great perception of heights. Come to find out, 400+ feet in a quarter of mile is pretty damn steep. And made all the more challenging by a spring melt that rendered portions of the trail so muddy that I was alternately walking through mud that sucked at my feet and caked my boots or was so slick that I could gain no traction. The pay off for this hell, an amazing hidden canyon.
Fruita Historic District from 300 feet (I still had another 100+ feet left to climb)
I have to wonder what those early Mormon settlers felt when they first experienced this land. After I finally finished the hellish climb, I found myself looking down into a canyon, probably no more than 40 or 50 yards wide at spots. The first thing I was struck by as I hiked down into the canyon was how diverse the vegetation was. Growing up in West Texas it’s hard for me to think about a desert that isn’t dry, desolate, and pretty much devoid of greenery and vegetation outside of cacti and mesquite bushes. (Yes, I know that they are technically trees but they look a lot more like bushes.) But here I am in a desert with junipers and Mormon tea bushes (I’m sure they are called something else but I don’t know what), oak trees, cacti, and other things that I can’t recognize. I just wasn’t expecting this level of green, but the presence of snow and the resulting melt explains the greenery. But then there are the red cliffs towering on either side of me, especially as I descend into the wash of the canyon.
Cohab Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park
Although descending into the canyon was a bit tricky with both ice on some parts of the trail and that infernal slick mud in other parts, it was worth the work. When I reached the bottom of the canyon it was perfectly silent and still. So much so that it was a bit unnerving and scary. It was so quiet that I jumped when I heard the rock contract from the melt—it sounded like a gunshot. That type of silence is rare for me. I’ve heard people say that silence can be deafening, but I think I finally understand what they mean by that. That silence was so profound, so tangible, and so solid. It felt material. And it was more than a bit frightening once I was aware of it; perhaps because of the isolation that it meant. It’s one thing for me to say that I want to get away from everyone, but it is quite another thing for that to be the reality when it means that I could slip, fall, and hurt myself. I may not really like people, but there is a certain safety in numbers. I’ve heard people say that silence can be deafening, but I think I finally understand what they mean. It was so profound, so tangible, so solid. And it was more than a bit frightening once I did hear the slightest of noise. I could suddenly imagine what it might feel like to be prey to once of the mountain lions roaming this area. The scale of where I was did not lend itself to feeling like I was at the top of the food chain.
But I survived and made it back tired, soar beyond belief, and grateful to climb up into my tent to see what tomorrow brings.