n Lodge where they did our laundry - oh happy day! This place is beautiful, just sumptuous, after a week of camping even more so. I walked over to the Burr Trail Outpost which is an artisan shop and cafe of the most charming arrangement. Met a woodworker, Dennis Bertucci, who is originally from Brooklyn; when I told him a bit about my work with G & J, he said I should get in touch with a local artist, Amsel Springs (who Janet and Katie met by chance a few days earlier - small world, no?) because he thinks Mr. Spring should be shown in NY. It was a delightful encounter.
Our dinner at Hell's Backbone Grill was lush with beautiful presentations and complex flavors. (I want their cookbook!) After dinner Greg and I worked on sorting all the food in our traveling pantry by meal category then by meal, then by car camping versus backpacking. By the end I was tired and my right arch was aching. Heading back to my room the disaster of my belongings exploded on the bed faced me and I moaned with exhaustion, wishing for a fairy godmother to magically pack it up. Instead I called BC while lying on the bed in a stupor; eventually packing while talking. Per my usual I did not fall immediately asleep - my mind was racing over details. While talking to BC, I spoke about how much I was pushing myself physically and in other ways, the tears of pent up emotions leaked out but I would not, could not fully let go. Perhaps it would have been better to have done so. There was something about talking to her, or talking with someone not part of this allowed all the vulnerability of this come to the fore.
For the first time this trip I got too hot while sleeping - it was a delic
ious annoyance. In the morning I showered again, just because I could! We all met up for breakfast at Hell's Backbone, again the food was excellent and oh my god, real coffee! I decided to pass on the Anasazi Museum which was fortunate as I had forgotten that I had scheduled an interview with a writer from the Art Calender, which went very well(I'm in this issue).
During this trip I find myself randomly sexually hungry and wish BC were here. It feels a little different out here, more primal, organic. Maybe in all the big silences out here one can feel, hear their body better. I just feel it ride through for the moments it's present until some other stimuli takes precedence.
Now we are in Devil's Garden, inside the Escalante Staircase National Monument. We will head next to Dance Hall Rock where we will camp for the night. Tomorrow is another night elsewhere. All of us are in different dyads or alone right now. There is a nice breeze floating over the landscape which obscures the sun's heat a bit. At one point while walking around the hoodoos, I could not hear or see any of our party - thought about what having that sort of space is like, to be connected and yet not at all; each of us in
our own world within arelatively small acreage. It is a luxury few of us have with any regularity, some almost never. I wonder if some folks, particularly the very city bound would find this scary - this big sky, silence except for pure nature, meandering paths that exist in the wild. No lines, or lights to help them pinpoint themselves in place and time; how many would cower under the moonlight, hearing the wind careening through these canyons, findthe layers of flaking mud on the Harris Wash unearthly.
The silence at night, on cold hard earth is one the loneliest moments for me, even as I take pleasure to be far from what I know. Physically uncomfortable, little is soft, the air cold, confined by a mummy sleeping bag, I suppose some would find this almost akin to torture. I rather relish the discomfort of the body and soul in this discreet time. It is a
challenge to let go of expectation, to be in the now, to try not to yearn for the other world.
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