I left Marfa and headed to Phoenix, a day of mostly driving. Only in Phoenix to go to Cosanti, really. And stopping over as a point between Marfa and Joshua Tree. The hotel feels like a hipster motel. A fun outdoor restaurant and bar with a pool. This night there is a DJ at the pool, which is fun. 

The next morning I drive a little ways to Cosanti for a tour of the grounds and the bell-making foundry and studio. 

I’m early so I walk in to check-in. The lady at the desk tells me I can wait for a bit in the shop or outside in the shade. I walk around the shop because I know exactly the bell I want. I pick it out and she sets it to the side for me for after my tour. 

We meet out in the shade with a guy named Tony who gives us a tour of the grounds and Paolo Soleri’s studio and the home where his apprentices lived. The entire thing is beautiful. 

He was an apprentice under Frank Lloyd Wright. He has a few projects around the Phoenix area, but for the most part he spent his time experimenting with earth and concrete on his land. He would build these beautiful concrete structures by moving the earth into mounds, laying out rebar, then pouring concrete over the mounds. And once the concrete was cured, he would begin digging out the dirt. He wanted to build sustainably, with the earth, and utilize passive solar techniques that he learned while working with Wright.  

And while the structures were incredible and his principles were well-founded, obviously, he didn’t have many commissions. So he spent most of his time, on his land, dedicated to his work. 

Tony told us a story that the concrete guys showed up to pour his concrete roof structures and they asked where his crew was….he didn’t have one. It was just him. 

After constructing his first few structures, he had several apprentices, a few living on the grounds as recent as a couple of years ago. Though only one really became a notable architect—Will Bruder who did the Phoenix Library. He’s pretty great. 

At some point Soleri visited Italy and saw bronze castings. He had made the bells ever since. Though he didn’t have a prolific career in architecture, he was able to make money selling the bells. And I love them.

 

After the tour we get to see a pour at the foundry. Their furnace was water-logged after all the rain, so it took a while to get it hot enough. But they were ready.

I think about going to see the Phoenix Library but decide to head out to Joshua Tree so I can get my bearings and check things out before dark. 

The landscape has changed so much since I left Memphis (obviously). But this was maybe the most disconcerting landscape change I drove through. Arizona is beautiful. But at some point I crossed into California. I turned off the main highway and down a two-lane road. This was the desert. White sand as far as I could see. Completely desolate. Just me and this road that looked like it was leading to nowhere. 

I put on U2’s Joshua Tree album, because, why not. 

When I was in the shop at Cosanti, the lady asked me where I was from, what brought me to Phoenix, etc. I told her the story of being on this trip and where I was headed next.

“Be very careful.”

“In what way….?” There was really nothing I said to indicate I was doing anything overtly dangerous…

“The rain. The monsoons they have been having in California and Utah are insane. Even though it may not be raining where you are, the water will still travel. Just be careful.”

I was a bit nervous to say the least. And after my last camping experience, I didn’t know what to really expect.

I pull into 29 Palms and fill up my gas tank. Just pouring money into that gas tank. And then I set off down the road to the park.

I drive up to the entrance station. The park ranger is so nice.

“Hey, welcome, would you like a map? Do you have any questions about the park?

“I would love a map. Um…I’m staying at Jumbo Rocks. Anything I need to know?”

“It’s raining there now. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay. It’s about eight miles up the road”

Great. Exactly what I was nervous about and it’s happening at my campground. Ah well, face your fears!

I drive up the road and wind my way through the park. It’s beautiful. 

When I finally get to Jumbo Rocks it’s cool from the rain and the sun is shining. And the rocks! I’ve never seen anything like them. I find my camp, park my jeep, grab my backpack, and start walking. I hike up the rocks and wander around them for a bit. Then through the desert a ways, then back to camp. 

I get everything set up for the night and crawl into my tent as the sun is setting. I still haven’t gotten over my fear of the dark. And it is DARK. And I hear coyotes as I get my tent open for the night. I saw a three-legged one as I was driving in, but this is an entire pack, somewhere off in the distance. Please stay in the distance. 

I read for a while in my tent, then turn my lights off to let my eyes adjust. I open my tent and rest my head on the side and stare up at the stars. Like someone threw a handful of glitter in front of my face.

When I was driving here I was listening to a Radiolab episode called “Escape.” In the second part of the episode they talk about the Voyager spacecraft. They had an episode a while back that talked about Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan getting the record together that they would put on the spacecraft, essentially sounds of Earth—music, words, etc.—for whomever might eventually find it floating out in space. 

But this episode was about when the Voyager reached the outer limits of our Solar System, after having collected information of Saturn and Jupiter. They decide they are going to turn the cameras off to conserve energy, but before they do, Carl Sagan tells them to turn the cameras around for one last picture. 

They describe the photo as being mostly dark, a few rays of light from the Sun. And down in the corner, so small you would miss it if someone didn’t point it out, is a tiny blue dot. Earth. Carl says it’s everyone you’ve ever known, everything you’ve ever seen, all history, the good and the bad. All the bloodshed to have a tiny moment of dominance on this infinitesimally small blue dot floating in space. How small it all seems. 

And tonight I was staring out from the blue dot. Back into everything. The feeling was immense. Overwhelming.  

I lay there for a while, letting the weight of the night rest heavy on my soul. All the things. So big in my world. And also so small. 

I eventually close up my tent and fall asleep. 

About 2:00 am, a coyote howl fest. Please stay in the distance. At least I’m up in the air. 

I wake up early and decide I will do a little biking before folks start spilling into the park. I ride down the Geology Tour Road a bit, but back out. I’ll bring my jeep for this. Back down the road to see the Sheep Pass, Ryan Mountain, the Hall of Horrors. I drop my bike at the Hall of Horrors and hike on the big rocks for a bit. Back up to my campsite to cool off and then to see Skull Rock. 

The hike to Skull Rock is easy and full of people. And the actual Skull Rock is literally crawling with people. I’ll have to come back first thing in the morning before I leave. 

I walk back down to my car and rest and eat a little. 

I can see off in the distance the storms rolling in so I pack my stuff up and head out in my jeep back down to the Geology Tour Road. Nobody else is on this road. And I’m a little nervous about what I’ve heard about the rain. And the fact that there is a sign posted: NOT A PATROLLED ROAD. Or something like that. Basically nobody comes down here. 

But I’m excited about putting my four-wheel drive training to use! And it’s so fun. A few puddles that I gamble on and it’s fine, the path mostly dry. Then I come to a spot where the road is fully covered in water. Not gambling on this one, so I turn around. 

I drive back down the paved road to the Cholla Cactus Garden. It is farther than I realized. And the rain is rolling in. I get out as it starts thundering. Walk through a bit, then back out before it starts storming—the campsite is at a higher elevation. 

As I drive out it starts raining. I see the rangers driving the opposite direction back down to the Cactus Garden. 

I get back to the campsite and it storms for another hour. I sit and read in the car before popping my tent back up. 

I have a bit to eat, read some more, sit, walk around, finish my book. 

It’s about this time I decide I hate camping by myself. There are moments where I enjoy the solitude, but for the most part, it feels lonely. Too many big thoughts and big ideas that are almost too heavy to sit with alone. Someone else to share. And someone else to lighten the mood. Anyway. I wait for nightfall and climb into my tent. 

When the sun starts peeking over the rocks the next morning I start packing up. I’m itching to get out and do something else. I drive back down to 29 Palms. My messages start coming in. 

The first one I see is from Rebecca Courtney.

I call her. 

“Listen. I think I hate camping alone. I’m losing my mind.”

I can’t spend four days camping in Moab by myself. 

It’s ok, redirect. I feel better.

An email that most of the roads and trails in Joshua Tree are closed from the storm the day before. Glad I got it all in before the rain.

I’m driving to Vegas. This was on the itinerary, though I never really wanted it to be. But I wanted a decent hotel to get myself together before camping in Utah. Anyway.

But before I leave I hit up the Cactus Trails Cafe. I have a cactus omelette with tortillas and salsa verde and hashbrowns and listen to the locals talk to each other across the entire restaurant. A somehow perfect experience.

I start driving through the desert. I put on Robert Plant’s “29 Palms” and then I let Spotify do its thing. A few with him and Allison Kraus which I love and then another song and something reminds me of Chris Isaak so I switch to him. It’s a good morning. 

A few abandoned houses along the way. Just set out in the desert. I stop at a few to take pictures. Wondering what brought people to those places, and then why they left. And how they stay here. I can’t do it. 

Keep driving.

I get close to Vegas and somehow I have the feeling that I will hate this whole thing. And I have to wash clothes.

Sin City Suds. I wash and dry my clothes as quickly as possible and head to the hotel. I park in the hotel parking lot, but it’s quite a ways from the front door. I haul all my gear up to my room. I need to repack my bag for the next several days. In true fashion, I packed too much. 

Somehow I can’t find any motivation to leave the room. I don’t even want to go out and photograph, which I had planned on doing. 

I order room service—sushi—and settle in. 

The next morning I am pumped. I’ve got my bag repacked, I’m headed to Utah, and I’ve got a new plan—not spending four days in Moab by myself. Only one and a half and then another quick detour to Colorado before my river trip. 

I grab some of my bags and head down to my car. I turn the corner to the parking lot and look up to see my jeep. Something looks off. My freaking bike is gone. 

I walk up to it in disbelief. Surely someone did not take my bike. I look a little closer. They cut through the plastic straps and just took it.

I still can’t believe it and I start feeling light-headed. What am I going to do in Moab? All I wanted to do was ride the trails. 

Did I not lock it back after I rode in Joshua Tree? Is the rack broken and I don’t even know it? I’m so angry. 

I go back up to my room, grab the rest of my things, and check out. 

A number of subsequent events to ruin my morning and I finally leave the parking lot. I feel like I’m about to have a stroke. Trying not to cry. Trying to not be angry. 

I decide chicken could make this morning better—I’ll get chick-fil-a before I head out. I put it into google maps and start driving.

I turn the corner and it’s in an effing casino. Seriously. I hate it here.

I start driving back down the street and see a Panera. Fine, I’ll get a bagel.

I go in and order. The guy at the counter asks my name for the order.

“It’s Megan.”

“Ok, M-A-Y…”

“Nope. M-E-G-A-N.” 

One of the most annoying things I have lived with my entire life is being named “Megan” in the South. It inevitably comes out “Maygen” to those with a real Southern drawl. Like nails on a chalkboard. Please not this morning Mr. Panera Man.

I get my bagel and hit the road. I decide before I leave this area, I should probably see the Hoover Dam. So I set out in that direction. 

I get to the security check point and they ask me to pull over to the side. Three guys surround my jeep.

“Hello there, ma’am. We’re gonna need you to get out and open the back and open the container on the roof.”

“Uh, sure. Um. The roof is a tent…”

“That’s ok, can you please open it.”

I hop out and swing my now empty bike rack to the side to open the back.

The guy looks in. “Alright thank you.”

I climb up on the back of my jeep. It is sweltering outside. And three guards are watching me open it. I pop it open barely halfway.

“Ok, thank you. You can close it now.”

Dammit, man. It is a process to make sure this is all tucked in. And now there is a line forming behind me. I look over to the side.

“Hey, can you make sure it’s tucked in on that side?”

The guard looks up and they start helping me tuck in the tent so it doesn’t take as long as it usually does to close it up. Thankfully they were all very nice.

I drive to the dam. 

An amazing feat of human engineering. And the landscape is breathtaking. A very strange juxtaposition of admiring both. Simultaneously hating the dam and being awestruck at how incredible it is. 

I drive on to Utah. The rest of the state of Nevada is uninteresting desert. A weird gas station stop. I honestly can’t wait to get out. 

I drive through Arizona for a ways and it’s incredible. Then I get to Utah and I keep scooting closer to the steering wheel to look out. 

I drive through Zion to get to the Ponderosa I’m camping at. It is absolutely unreal. I’m grinning as wide as my face with tears rolling down. How stupid. But it is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I get the name now.

I get into the Ponderosa. They have a few options you can sign up for. The first thing I signed up for was Ruth’s Country Dinner. Sure, why not?

Apparently it’s been moved to one of the vacation houses because the yurts were flooded in the storms. I drive through all the vacation homes until I get to the end of the road. It looks like nobody else is here…

I walk up and ring the doorbell. An older man answers.

“Hi. Uh, is this Ruth’s Country Dinner?”

“Well, this is my house. There’s dinner tonight. Come on in.”

“Uh, ok. Thanks.” What on earth.

It’s me, the old guy who answered the door, his wife, and two musicians setting up. And an entire bar full of food with empty tables set up all around. 

“You can come sit with us if you’d like. I’m Royce and this is Debbie.”

I sit down with them. The three of us, sitting together at one table, in this big empty house while the musicians set up.

We start talking. I soon realize this is in fact not Royce’s house. He knows the musicians, and he’s here to see them. 

Both he and Debbie say I’m very brave for going on this trip by myself. 

We keep talking.

He points to the female musician, “I’ve known her since she was a baby. They’re fantastic musicians. Russ plays every stringed instrument there is. His dad made some of those fiddles over there.”

He doesn’t really stop talking. And Debbie is rather quiet, but so sweet.

The female musician comes over and starts talking to Royce. I zone out a bit and listen to the other musician warm up.

She walks away. “She came over to tell me a woman in our congregation fell today and broke both her arms! We’re Latter Day Saints. Most…people know us as Mormons. But we’re really Latter Day Saints. Lindsay and Russ met at BYU. They have four beautiful children. They live in our community. We all live in a community together, our entire congregation.”

This is all turning out to be a very interesting evening. 

More people start coming in and we line up to get food. Royce talks to everyone. Debbie and I sit down. “He never stops talking,” Debbie says. I just laugh a little bit. “He’s good at it!”

The music is great, the food is great. Royce and Debbie introduce me as their “friend from Tennessee.” I wish they had said “friend from Memphis.” I sometimes think Memphis and Tennessee are two different places. A tiny blue dot…

After dinner I say goodbye to Royce and Debbie and head back to the campsite to set up before it gets too dark. 

The only downside to my entire setup is that I have to pack it all down to leave in my jeep. Otherwise, it’s absolutely perfect. 

I can’t really sleep. So I lay awake scrolling through pictures on my phone from the past several days. I finally fall asleep.

I have to be up early. I’m taking an ATU ride to Crimson Canyon and Slot Canyon. At 7:00 am. Which means I have to get myself together in the dark, pack my stuff up, and head thirty minutes away to meet at a gas station for the ride. 

I’m up at 5:30, but somehow still rushing. 

No one is up at camp. No one is out on the roads. It’s cloudy and the sun is starting to come up. I love quiet, early mornings. So peaceful. And so much ahead.

We set out on the ATUs. This guy is not playing around. He does three of these tours everyday. So times when I think we are about to tumble over the side of the path, he knows we won’t.

He drives us down a trail and points out some tiny homes. The homes the government gave the workers when they were constructing the park. I go back and photograph them after our tour. I’ll have to do a photo dump of my camera pics when I get home.

We get to the Crimson Canyon. We can only go in a short distance because it’s been flooded by the rains. We all do a photoshoot instead and head over to the Slot Canyon. 

A short hike into the canyon, talking to the guides the entire way. 

One of them tells about one hiking trip he was on. I missed the beginning, but start to tune in to this part:

“…so I see a trail of blood. And I’ve been hunting enough to know a serious blood trail when I see it. So I follow it to a big opening where it ends. They must have airlifted the guy out there. So I follow it back the other way. And I get to the canyon wall. And you can tell the guy climbed up about twenty, thirty feet, and let go. There’s a big blood splatter where he hit the first time, then another splatter where he bounced, then a BIGGER splatter where he bounced again and finally landed and stayed for a little while…”

Good lord. 

This canyon is different but still beautiful. We do another photoshoot, then back out.

The story on the way back, when I tuned in:

“….I was standing there and she ran up and stood up. She snarled and growled and clacked her teeth together. Then she got down like she was ready to roll me over. And then I hear something running up in the hill and she looked up and ran off. It was her cub behind me. I thought she was looking at me, but I think it was her cub. That cub saved me, because she was ready to charge. Bears always look bigger in the moment than they are. She would have pawed me around a bit. There was a log right there. I had to sit down. Try not to throw up. That was the most fear I’ve ever had running through my body. I had to wait thirty minutes for my legs to stop shaking so I could stand up.”

Wow. Again. 

After the hike, I grab some breakfast at the cafe next to the gas station. Then I drive back through the park. 

About halfway through I stop and hike up to the Canyon View. 

The views were so incredible. And I’m completely amazed they let the general public walk along the face of mountains like that without rails. Kids just running along the edge. Old ladies in flip flops. Some guys running ahead of everyone like it’s a race. And the fine sand on the sandstone is slippery. It’s not difficult to start to slide when you think you have a steady footing. Anyway. 

It’s amazing to look up at the canyon walls. To see the layers. Millions and millions and millions of years.

“You’re looking at time,” Ryan says.

Just the basic elements—sand, water, air, and time. Making some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. 

And on that timeline, Earth’s timeline, I’m just a tiny blue dot. You’d miss it if you didn’t know where to look.

A storm rolled through so I chilled at camp for the rest of the afternoon. Writing this for a while, reading. 

I have a bit of advice for braving a trip like this alone after some significant losses. And a global pandemic. And all the other crazy stuff that’s happened. Don’t read Into the Wild or The Year of Magical Thinking. I’m joking mostly. Into the Wild was great, but it’s not a happy ending. Something about thinking about venturing out into the wilderness to make it on your own. And then never making it out. All the folks he met. All the folks he left behind. Being outside society. And then perhaps having accomplished what you set out to do but never making it back. A lot to think about. But a great book nonetheless. I don’t know that I’ll be able to make it through Joan Didion right now. I’m about forty-five pages in, but I don’t know if I can keep going with it. A bit too heavy. Anyway. I’ll maybe move on to another I brought.

Sometimes all the thoughts are a bit too heavy. Neural pathways I’ve been down and been down and been down a million times. Some paths I wish I could forget. Wash it away with the rains rolling in. Some new paths. I hope I remember the way when I need to. 

Sometimes my anxiety comes back in weird flashes. Sometimes the grief bubbles back up in unexpectedly painful ways. I guess that’s what it does.

I woke up very early this morning. The campsite was a shitshow last night. A group of about five huge trucks with four-wheelers and I swear half a million children showed up right before dark. Which means they were setting up camp well into the night. And the children were running around, screaming well after 11:00. Which caused the toddlers at the site next door to cry (more like scream) until it was over. Finally after it was quiet and I was able to sleep, I woke up to what I thought was someone driving down the gravel, about 1:00 am. I became fully conscious and realized it was not someone driving, but the neighbor, the father of the screaming children, snoring. Listen, if I can hear you breathe when you sleep an entire campsite over, enough to keep me awake, there may be a problem. I put in headphones and get back to sleep. Around 3:00, the baby next door starts screaming again. I woke up at 5:30 and was on the road by 7:00. Good lord.

A little drowsy. A little melancholy. My music won’t connect for some reason, even for my downloaded playlists on Spotify. I have to switch to some of the weird music I bought over the years for various reasons before I moved to Spotify. 

Driving along, not many people on the road. Clear bright morning sun changes to clouds. And the clouds change to thick, cool fog. Ghosty cows and trees in the distance. 

I turn up my music as loud as I can stand it and find myself shouting the lyrics. Getting rid of some pent up feelings. 

Thinking about the moments in songs I live for. The bass line, that guitar, the horns, the lyrics. Shouting the lyrics driving along the road. 

All in all is all we are

All in all is all we are

All in all is all we are

And now I’m in Moab. I’m tired from the night and the road. When the room is ready I’ll probably get a nap before going out and finding a bike rental. Damn bike thieves.