It's the desert's M.O., I think, to make you feel small.
First, of course, you have its physical immensity: it stretches outward, from horizon to horizon, but also upward, the vertical vastness of the great cliff and canyon country. Cities can dwarf you, too, of course, but not to this extent. Humans have yet to be able to dominate the landscape like this. This is Mother Nature flexing.
But it's not just a matter of feeling small in space; the desert makes you feel small in time. When you're sitting in a classroom and the teacher is casually dropping phrases like "a billion years ago," the numbers are meaningless. Spans like that are beyond human comprehension. But here, you can feel it. The slow turning of the continent, the ancient barren sand dunes sunken by the roll of fertile seas, long since dried up. You look into those bluer-than-blue skies and can almost see the pliosaurids swimming above you. Things move on geologic time.
I certainly have no use for, or even concept of, human time here. I think the sun set yesterday at around nine. But the sky holds the light long after the sun has retreated beyond the cliff-faces, and so does the white stone, the sand underfoot and the bands of selenite running through the canyon walls seeming to glow from within.
I arrived at Hunter's Canyon when the sun was already dipping towards the western wall of Kane Creek; I had originally intended to go all the way out to the Ledges camping area, but I was worried about getting my tent set up before dark. I needn't have been concerned. I had plenty of time to stake my tent, do a little yoga, and explore my campsite before I even had to turn my headlamp on.
I'm just off the road (empty now, as it has been all evening), but only a few steps from Kane Creek itself--which, despite its diminutive name, has carved out a surprisingly deep canyon for itself over the millennia. The creek itself is a riparian area, lush with big cottonwoods, reeds, rushes. I set off towards it on a deer path and find that here--a ways upcanyon--it's already gone summer-stagnant, the creekbed still full but unmoving, choked by thick ribbons of algae. I hop across some flaky red sandstone slabs. On the other side, yellow seed-stalk grasses cover a small floodplain. They've been flattened out into swirling patterns by this year's high spring runoff.
From that sandy bench, a cliff rises in several distinct ledges. I heave myself up onto the first level of red stone. What are those strange round indentations in the stone called? How are they formed?¹ Sometimes they honeycomb the rock. Here, they make perfect hand- and foot-holds for some real scrambling. One foot goes in deeper than I expect it to. I pull it out quickly. That is occupied, for sure--no self-respecting desert creature would leave such a prime piece of real estate empty. I set my foot back into it, shallow, gingerly; I don't want to disturb a tarantula or scorpion tonight, or, god forbid, a rattlesnake.
The top of the second ledge is about forty or fifty feet up and offers a great view of my campsite. My tent is so small! And my car way too big and shiny for this place. In a day or two it'll be rust-colored with desert dust. No snakes, but plenty of skittering lizards. They run headfirst down the vertical rock faces, fearless. Evening is the reign of the crepuscular birds. One gives two sharp notes followed by a trill; another descends a whole-tone scale. The crickets begin their strumming as well. That sound, along with the high squeak of the fluttering bats, will continue into the night. The gnats are out in force, too. I wonder whether they're a good source of protein; I must inhale about a hundred a minute. I suck them off my teeth like a whale's baleen.
As it finally gets dim, the rock of the canyon walls looks like it's melting, the shadows pooling weirdly in those indentations. The scent of sage is pungent. Last night the moon was so bright I thought I'd forgotten to put the fire out. She's fuller tonight. We'll see if she peeks through the clouds.
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My god. The moon is so bright. She hasn't risen over the canyon wall yet but she's lit up the opposite side as though a spotlight were pointed at it--though no spotlight on earth is that powerful. The moonward wall of the canyon casts a huge, ominous shadow on the illuminated one. The clouds have parted. I can see the ribbon of the Milky Way.
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Woke up this morning the the sound of two crows cawing to each other in the canyon. Everything is so loud here, sounds amplified, bouncing between the opposing faces of the high stone walls. It's a nasty sound, but nature doesn't judge. Can't tell whether they're flirting or fighting. One flew over me as I rolled the tent up, its finger-like pinion feathers stretched wide. Beckoning me out towards another day in canyon country.
¹ Tafoni! A word I'd learned and forgotten. They're formed in limestone when rainwater dissolves the calcite that bonds the rock together. The calcite itself is the remnants of ancient shells, a reminder that this arid place was once a vast shallow sea. And when little critters live and die in the tafoni, their decomposition turns the water acidic, causing the calcite to dissolve even faster. So ancient animals are holding the rock together, and modern animals are eroding it away. Life and death are everywhere in the desert.
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