Squall beauty

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Scheduled to give two outdoor geology programs this morning, I studied the clouds intently. My winter uniform was retrieved from the closet on this blustery May day that SHOULD be nearing 80 degrees but showed no promise of hitting mid-50s. Park visitors, God bless ‘em, still come to ranger talks no matter the weather.

As I approached my assigned overlook, rain twelve miles off was descending in thick curtains, silently drenching the desert below. Precipitation gives a shimmery appearance that glistens in your heart as much as on the landforms, and I felt momentarily giddy to see my parched park drinking up the gift of water.

Shallow depressions in the sandstone gathered the droplets, half inch deep, two inches deep. These ephemeral potholes nurture all living things, from the tiniest of organisms to our largest predators. To see standing water is to receive soul-refreshment. Who doesn’t need that???

 

 

 

A good-looking neighbor

Sun’s final rays illuminate the sandstone of Dead Horse Point State Park, UT.

Only ten minutes of daylight remain, so we sprint from the car to the overlook with our cameras and our willingness to be impressed. Even so, the view into the canyon stops us in our tracks. There is no river vista quite as expansive as that at Dead Horse Point State Park, next-door-neighbor to Canyonlands. Eons of erosion have dismantled rock, grain by grain, leaving this tapestry of sandstone guarding the miniaturized Colorado River 2000 feet below.

The desert in winter: a good place to visit

Last traces of mesa-top snow melted in early March. La Sal Mountains 35 miles distant will retain their snowy caps into June.

Desert landscapes benefit from having contrast; Utah’s beauty is at its peak in the seasons where red is tempered by something else. In springtime, small flower blossoms accomplish that. Autumn brings golden cottonwoods, lighting riparian zones afire. Winter, however, earns the prize: white snow breaking up vast expanses of sandstone, looking for all the world like a layer of frosting on sedimentary cake.

Winter also reveals easy-to-read clues of wildlife activity. Tracks are far simpler to follow and identify in fresh snow, leaving my mind to imagine what that scurry was all about, or who ate whom, or who lives where.

This winter’s long stretch of bitter cold (continuous weeks below zero — an anomaly for southern Utah) left a new sensation underfoot when I returned. Our soil was broken up and fluffed by frost action, and it felt as if I were walking on sifted flour instead of packed desert sand.

Do consider visiting your national parks in the off season. It has become my favorite time to explore new places.

As seen through Mesa Arch

Snow-capped La Sal Mountains and Washer Woman Arch; Canyonlands NP.

“In every man’s heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.”

– Christopher Morley

I was alive for decades before I began to understand and name my own personal sources of refreshment and refueling. With joy I report: life has taken me to a place where I daily experience them in feast-ish proportions. When I am roving the trails on ranger duty, standing on the edge of canyons a couple thousand feet deep, staring at ragged mountains jutting two a a half miles above sea level, breathing in great lungfuls of silence, that ‘secret nerve’ is fully activated. At times it seems that my heart can barely survive the reverberations.

What stirs YOUR secret nerve? What fills you, satisfies you, nourishes your soul? I’d like to know.

Again, it begins

Clouds linger in the canyons after winter’s last gasp at Island in the Sky district..

Spring is marching forth with unbridled energy as I return to Utah to begin my fifth season as a ranger in Canyonlands National Park. Winter’s remains are draped over the land; pockets of snow cower on the north sides of blackbrush and juniper, knowing their demise is imminent. The strengthening desert sun leaves no option.

Driving up and over the high knoll which conceals the massive sandstone chasms, knowing what spectacular view lies just ahead, I inhale deeply… but nothing in all the earth prepares me for the beauty that unfolds southward.

Words from a Mary Oliver poem rise in my soul, reverberating like harmonics after a deep gong has been rung –

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

Joy, joy — I am back where I belong.

A geologic symphony

Christopher Layer playing the great highland pipes at Grand View Point.

There I was at the Farmers’ Market in Moab, representing the National Park Service at a booth. Along came a musician, an artist-in-residence type, and BAM before you knew it a plan had arisen for him to provide live music for my geology talk the next week.

Music is a wondrous metaphor. It serves well when words fall short. It connects both halves of the brain, helps build relationships in our minds, strengthens our understanding. Crossing language barriers, it stirs emotion and is a powerful tool in the work of interpretation.

Ranger Kathryn, all ears, listening to bagpipe interpretation of geologic processes.

But… musical geology??? YES. Great composers have written about magnificent formations (Grofe’, Grand Canyon Suite) or mountains (Mussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain) or an entire solar system (Holst, The Planets). Surely Canyonlands National Park could provide the inspiration for improvised interludes of flute and bagpipe and Uilleann pipe music between the movements of my own geologic symphony.

Improv keeps you on your toes and opens you to new ideas. The playlist that I use in my regular geology talk is comprised of classical music excerpts; this day it was whatever the musician was moved to play. I’ll let you try to imagine what lithification (process of turning sediment to rock) might sound like on the pipes.

Thanks, Christopher Layer, for moving me out of my comfort zone and bringing your creativity to my Sunday ranger talk!

Graffiti: my nemesis

Scrubbing graffiti off sandstone while it’s 95 degrees in the shade is challenging. At least it’s a dry heat.

Spending the last two weeks on Graffiti Detail has deepened my passionate dislike of this stuff. Human nature wants to preserve a record of its presence in a place; graffiti is an ill-thought-out means of demonstrating that you were here. I’d venture to guess that the typical age of those who write on rocks (signs, trees, fences, etc) is 14-24 — well before their prefrontal cortex is fully developed and they can think through Cause & Effect more clearly.

A few minutes of circular scrubbing with a brush, water, and a handful of sand can get light surface graffiti off of our soft sandstone. If it’s incised more deeply, like pocket-knife initials grooved into a boulder, it takes much more elbow grease and multiple attempts. The brush-smear that remains is a give-away that a thoughtless person left their mark there.

You know, visitors photograph everything — including me removing graffiti, which always elicits a curious “What are you doing?” from folks wondering if I’m washing an arch. A splendid Teachable Moment ensues. My personal favorite: parents offering their youngsters for the removal efforts. Those children will never write on rock after working hard to restore it to its natural condition.

And, finally, in the category of “Imagine That”: previous graffiti-removal volunteers in national parks have inadvertently erased priceless historic signatures, so training is mandatory before one can tackle the curse of moderns leaving their marks behind.

Please… don’t write on things in public! I’d much rather be interpreting the park’s beauty for visitors than remediating what’s been defaced.

Eclipsed by a rattlesnake

A well-mannered crowd gathers at Green River Overlook to take in the solar eclipse.

The solar eclipse was anticipated in our park for months. Sunday staff was added, programming put in place, and 40 or 50 solar viewing glasses were ordered. In Canyonlands, about 70-80% of the solar disc would be covered — impressive, but nothing like in Bryce Canyon or Zion, where 94% coverage would create the dramatic “ring of fire” of an annular eclipse.

Through our home-made pinhole camera, the crescent sun is safely viewed.

Nothing could have prepared us for the level of interest generated among visitors to Canyonlands. For an eclipse beginning at 6:30 pm, the parking area was full before 4:30. Around 300 folks gathered at the Green River Overlook, bringing lawn chairs, blankets, picnics, and excitement. They willingly shared the limited number of viewers we had available, and spent the next hours hanging out in a lovely place observing a rare celestial event.

Families played games while waiting and watching. Pinhole cameras were devised. People made hand shadows, casting little crescents on the ground. And, at an opportune time, a small Midget Faded Rattlesnake slithered onto the scene to add to the festive atmosphere. Ranger Julia, who regularly gives a talk on reptiles, stayed near the foot-long youngster all evening to educate visitors about it and make sure no one harassed it. It seemed only a little confused by the crowd, generally staying underneath the blackbrush and Mormon Tea.

A woven straw hat — pinhole camera times a thousand — creates crescents on a paper behind it.

A small band of young boys made a loop snare from a piece of grass and caught an unsuspecting lizard. Ranger Julia intervened, creating a teachable moment for the kids and their parents. The moon continued its trek across the face of the sun, and the early-evening light took on a thin filtered quality that is unlike any other astronomical condition. Glasses were passed around; oohs and ahhs emanated from every perch.

At its peak, for just a few moments, all the sun’s surface except a thin horseshoe of light was covered. The little rattler slithered to his next bush, oblivious. Visitors, joyful, thanked us for putting on an event like this. “It’s our privilege” was the only thing I could say as I pinched myself and walked to the edge to shoot a picture of the waning light.

Our little rattlesnake youngster stayed for the entire celestial event.
One visitor inquired “Did it come out because of the eclipse?” The answer is: No.

Desert fish = a rarity

Here in the southwest we mark our trails with neatly-stacked rock piles called cairns. When one follows cairns a lot, one becomes cognizant of  the countless different ways stones can be piled up: messily, artfully, crazily, larger-to-smaller-ly, monochromatically, unbalanced-ly, demurely, or with a surprise on top. I’ve photographed many beautiful cairns in the past three years, each time with a nod of appreciation to its builder whose personality shines through in the making.

Yesterday on the Alcove Spring trail I added a new adverb: FISHILY! Rounding a bend in my 11.2-mile hike, a rare desert carp occupied the trailside. Made my day. Whether an ichthyologist or an artist had a hand in this, I tip my hat to the one whose creative spark has brought many a smile along this daunting trail.

Mother’s Day sun-up

Sun’s first rays strike the formations west of Green River Overlook.

When you want to see the sun rise in all its glory, you seek out a high place. Baby Half Dome, a knob of Navajo sandstone in the middle of the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park, seemed perfect. I’d been up there for a sunset a couple of years ago and knew I could find my way to the top again. Once you know the combination to the service road gate, all it takes is perseverance, the ability to follow others’ footprints, and some scrambling moves on a couple of sketchy places.

The reward? Three hundred sixty degrees of stunning beauty. Complete and utter silence. Chiaroscuro lighting falling on the basins and river canyons below. A fresher, deeper realization of why I do what I do.

We moms think about our kids on Mother’s Day. I sent this photo via text to my four children as my friend and I stood way up there on top of my little spot. And, in celebration of my own mom, may I say: Mother, all that you have poured into me over the years has paid off in spades. You are beautiful, intelligent, wonderfully supportive, funny, a deeply-motivated lifelong learner, and a very classy lady. Happy Mother’s Day; I love you.