Trip of a Lifetime

Johnny picked me up from work last Thursday saying, "Trip of a lifetime, Fox, trip of a lifetime!"  WTF?  We are leaving Telluride to go on an end-of-the-summer 3 day camping trip to the desert, which is kind of business as usual.  The car is packed, we have turkey sandwiches and Americanos from Cindy Bread, nothing but time on our hands, together and alone out in Cedar Mesa.  But the Trip Of A Lifetime?  I don't get it.

I especially didn't get it when we were driving through Monticello, in the dark, dodging deer, in 40 mile-an-hour winds (the kind that makes American flags at gas stations stand straight out to the side) with what appeared to be handfuls of grey confetti tossed into the gusts.  Oh, wait - that's snow.

And it was right around this time that I began to see that we were on a Trip of a Lifetime.  Why not?  We would never have another weekend like this one, ever again, so let's get into it.  We figured that with the one earplug in our dop kit, we could cut it in half and each place one half in our upturned ear, to muffle the sounds of the flapping tent when we tried to sleep.  Turns out we didn't need it, as our campsite was only mildly breezy when we finally slithered inside our toasty down bags and drew the cords around our faces, so that only our noses and mouths were exposed to the cold, clear desert night air.

I am very fortunate in that my husband likes to arise early and make a roaring fire and scalding cups of coffee.  My task is to time my emergence from the tent at the exact moment that coffee is being poured into our camp mugs and he has thrown an armful of juniper branches on the fire, with the horizon turning amber-blue over Sleeping Ute, the La Platas, the Grenadiers, and the San Juans.

We have a friend and neighbor who claims to have found an intact Anasazi pot, the discovery of which actually caused him to cry, somewhere near our campsite.  He was generous enough to give us directions to it, yet the directions seem to be a combination of being specifically vague and vaguely specific, perhaps because they were told to us at a festival (I think), which makes both the deliverer and the deliveries recollections, somewhat suspect.  Regardless, we spend Friday attempting to locate said pot.

We were unsuccessful (no surprise).  The day warmed up enough, and we traipsed about the canyon rim, poking our faces in every rattlesnake den and overturning every scorpion-hiding rock, recounting the directions before finally concluding we had perfect excuse for coming back out another time, with better directions.

Friday night was really cold.  The thermometer in the sun showed 85, which of course it didn't feel like because the air was cool, and an hour later it showed 45, which of course it did feel like.  I was wearing two down jackets, hoody over a wool hat, inches away from the fire.  Lots of hot tea.  Trip of a Lifetime!

So anyway, Friday night and Saturday morning were cold as shit but it was kind of exciting!

Saturday proved to be our Epic Hike Day, when Tom and Kim from Monticello roared in after breakfast.  Our goal was a loop that included 7 Kivas and The Citadel, which we did, getting back to camp a little before dark.  It is immensely enjoyable to spend time with people that have known each other since they were in elementary school, to hear them telling stories about Little Jimmy So-and-So, or Suzie Whatever who beat the snot out of someone on the bus in Vermont in the 70's.  We laughed a lot, even when we were exiting a canyon, 90% sure that we could actually get out and on the rim after our near-vertical 700 foot ascent through boulders the size of Volkswagon bugs and refrigerators, loose dirt, slickrock and thorny brambles and shrubbery.  Here is the Citadel from afar and then closer from our climb out:

And then to actually get there you have to walk out on THIS:

Trip of a Lifetime, right?  I'm buying into it more and more, minute by minute.

Saturday night was warmer, which we both found slightly disappointing in some weird way and Sunday warmed up quickly, as we headed overland to explore some washes and see what we could find off the beaten path.  What we found: artifacts everywhere.  Pottery shards, jasper flakes, manos, scattered everywhere.  The ancient peoples of the Southwest were absolutely everywhere and they have left their mark.

You all have heard about Burning Man, right?  Well, there is a supposed petroglyph of a mammoth near Bluff, which we visited on our drive home.  The good people of Bluff have decided to honor the rock art in their neck of the woods by constructing a gigantic mammoth that is to be torches on the Solstice... Burning Mamm!!  We saw it in Bluff in a field, waiting patiently for its own immolation.  We saw the endless panels of rock art that line the San Juan river and walked and gaped and stopped and gaped and enjoyed the last warm beams of summer sun on our legs.

As we passed through the Navajo towns of Montezuma Creek and Aneth, the only word that  surfaces and lingers is bleak.   Dirt yards, trailers, roadside litter.  And Navajo are the wealthiest of all the Native American tribes.  Utterly bleak.

The almost-full moon rose over the La Platas as we entered Cortez, and made for a pleasant drive back up into our mountains, wrapping up what truly was... The Trip of a Lifetime.