Friday, August 15, 2008
Happy Birthday, Dad!
I was too inconsiderate to order your gift well in advance and too cheap to get expedited shipping, so it may not arrive tomorrow. But it will be there soon. In the meantime, here are photos from Bryce and Zion Canyons. For everyone who wasn't there, I've included the occasional caption. I couldn't recommend these two parks highly enough- some of the most beautiful places I've been. Way better than the Grand Canyon, in my opinion, which is remarkable only because it is big. My father, my brother, and I spent a few days out there between Day 1 and Day 2 of the WSOP.
This one is known as the sinking ship.
You can only see one of them but there were actually three of these little bridges crossing this narrow canyon.
This one looks a lot like a priest, if you zoom in.
My brother and me (unshaven and with hat hair).
My father, who commandeered the straw hat Poker Stars gave me. It definitely looked better on him.
Petrified rock.
Dad playing with his hand-held video camera.
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This one is known as the sinking ship.
You can only see one of them but there were actually three of these little bridges crossing this narrow canyon.
This one looks a lot like a priest, if you zoom in.
My brother and me (unshaven and with hat hair).
My father, who commandeered the straw hat Poker Stars gave me. It definitely looked better on him.
Petrified rock.
Dad playing with his hand-held video camera.
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Thursday, February 28, 2008
Back from the Grand Canyon
I'm just back from three wonderful days at the Grand Canyon with Emily. It really is an amazing place. I'd been once before, about fifteen years ago, but didn't remember too much about it. We took a lot of pictures, some of which I'll post here soon, but trite as this sounds, they don't do it justice.
The Grand Canyon isn't the most beautiful or picturesque or captivating of the many canyons to be found in the American Southwest. It's simply the biggest. To appreciate it, then, there's really no alternative to standing on its rim, looking thousands of feet straight down to the canyon floor and out across of miles of gullies and plateaus.
One gets a sense, not only of its great physical proportions, but of the extraordinary expanse of time it embodies. To see the tiny (from a distance) Colorado river and imagine it carving this vast canyon inch by inch is literally mind-boggling. Conceptually, one can envision the river carrying away bits of sediment, eventually triggering large landslides in which tons of shale collapsed into the emerging pit, but it's impossible to contain within the human brain a true sense of the hundreds of millions of years required to produce this magnificent landscape.
As a species, we have difficulty pondering even much shorter time-scales. The current controversy about global warming and the consequences that our actions today may have in the future demonstrates how poorly we incorporate even the next few human generations into our moral calculus. In all likelihood, human civilization will run its course and fade from the memory of the universe and, despite the frantic work of the Colorado, the Grand Canyon will appear to the last set of human eyes to gaze upon it indistinguishable from the way it looks to me today. There is nothing like staring into this geological abyss to remind you of your own impermanence and that of your entire species.
Stumble It!
The Grand Canyon isn't the most beautiful or picturesque or captivating of the many canyons to be found in the American Southwest. It's simply the biggest. To appreciate it, then, there's really no alternative to standing on its rim, looking thousands of feet straight down to the canyon floor and out across of miles of gullies and plateaus.
One gets a sense, not only of its great physical proportions, but of the extraordinary expanse of time it embodies. To see the tiny (from a distance) Colorado river and imagine it carving this vast canyon inch by inch is literally mind-boggling. Conceptually, one can envision the river carrying away bits of sediment, eventually triggering large landslides in which tons of shale collapsed into the emerging pit, but it's impossible to contain within the human brain a true sense of the hundreds of millions of years required to produce this magnificent landscape.
As a species, we have difficulty pondering even much shorter time-scales. The current controversy about global warming and the consequences that our actions today may have in the future demonstrates how poorly we incorporate even the next few human generations into our moral calculus. In all likelihood, human civilization will run its course and fade from the memory of the universe and, despite the frantic work of the Colorado, the Grand Canyon will appear to the last set of human eyes to gaze upon it indistinguishable from the way it looks to me today. There is nothing like staring into this geological abyss to remind you of your own impermanence and that of your entire species.
Stumble It!
Saturday, November 24, 2007
The Narrows
On Friday morning, we got the chance to explore the region of Zion called The Narrows that we had to pass on Sunday. As the name suggests, it's a particularly narrow portion of the canyon that is both one of the most scenic and one of the most difficult to traverse. In many places, the canyon floor is completely immersed by the Virgin River. During summer months, the water is warm enough for even amateur hikers to wade through The Narrows and appreciate its stunning, other-worldly assets.November, however, is a different story. The water temperature hovers not far above freezing, cold enough to numb unprotected limbs in a matter of minutes. Undeterred, intrepid explorers such as ourselves rent waterproof pants and shoes and Neoprene socks to protect against the frigid water. Armed with sturdy walking sticks to help us keep our footing despite slick rocks and swift currents, we plunged into the heart of Zion.
This was our first river hike, and it's a fun but tricky skill to acquire. It takes some trust to splash fully clothed into the knee-deep, icy cold river. The water rushes into your socks and momentarily chills your toes, but this is normal. Soon, your body heat warms that water and keeps your feet even more comfortable than if they were dry. Meanwhile, a rubber gasket around your ankle prevents any water from rushing up your pants legs and freezing the rest of your body. Instead, you feel a strange sucking sensation on your legs as the Gore-Tex material forms a water-tight seal against your skin.
Using your thick, shoulder-height pole for balance, you can walk relatively comfortably even through the more shallow rapids. The trick is to realize that you have three points of contact with the riverbed: two feet and the tip of your walking stick. As long as two of these are secured at any given time, the going won't be too difficult.
If you can see the bottom of the river, then stepping there is safe. Beyond that, your stick is also useful for probing the depths of the murky, dark green sections where you can't see the bottom. We were wearing only waterproof pants, so water that came up over our waists would be a disaster. Fortunately, the low water level meant that we could traverse the entire 16-mile length of The Narrows, if we wanted, without ever wading deeper than our thights. If we could remain on our feet, that is.
Generally, the river was shallower near either wall of the canyon, but when it did start to get deep on the side where you'd been walking, the only option was to cut horizontally across the deepest water and strongest current at the center of the river in order to reach the opposite shallows. Sometimes, particularly because of the low water level, we were able to walk across dry ground or very shallow sandbars.
Even during the hottest part of the afternoon, the bottom of The Narrows receives very little direct sunlight. The light does reflect magnificently off of the amber walls that tower overhead, however, making for some brilliant colors and an awe-inspiring atmosphere. You quickly become accustomed to the cliffs that soar hundreds of feet directly above you, because at a sharp angle you can't really appreciate their scale anyway, but sometimes you see another hiker in the distance and realize just how tiny he, and therefore you, are in relation to the massive canyon walls.Just as in the rest of the canyon, there are occasional crags, waterfalls, caves, and even side canyons hidden along the way. It's a real challenge to pay attention to your footing with so much fascinating scenery constantly seducing your gaze.
The best place to pause and take it all in is on one of the larger 'islands' where heaps of sand and stone rise well above water level. The highest of these sustain shrubs, grasses, and sometimes even deciduous trees. In November, the leaves of these trees have all turned yellow, orange, and pink, falling from their branches and blanketing the land around them in a pastel carpet. When illuminated by the soft light filtering in from the crack of sky far above, these islands adopt a heavenly glow, and I feel like Odysseus venturing into the Elysian fields (look it up, cretin).
November is generally a dead month in Zion, but Thanksgiving weekend is a tremendous exception. We waited in a line of cars 100-deep to get into the park and had to improvise a parking spot in the overcrowded lot near a rock formation called the Temple of Sinawava.
It's a different story in The Narrows, however, and we encounter only about twenty other hikers during our four hour tour. These range from grizzled veterans carrying packs large enough for multi-day hikes and ropes for thorough exploration of side canyons to other novices like ourselves wielding red-tassled walking sticks that mark them as renters from the same company that outfitted Emily and me.
We even encounter one particularly fool-hardy couple carrying no walking stick and wearing only sandles with jeens rolled up to their knees. "Can you still feel your toes?" Emily asks them.
"Barely," replies the woman, who seems much less excited about this trek than her partner. When they are out of earshot, we joke about how we will manage to carry their hypothermic bodies out of the canyon.
Unfortunately, we got kind of a late start on the day and have to turn back well before we would have preferred to avoid being caught in The Narrows after sunset, when the temperature plummets and the canyon is pitch black. Still, it was a great hike, one of the most interesting and beautiful we've done and also unique in its challenges.
The only bad news is that we forgot the replacement battery for Emily's camera and were left with only a cheap disposable that was no match for the majestic canyon. Those also haven't been developed yet, so unlike the pictures from my previous posts, the ones on here all come courtesy of PDPhoto.
Labels: narrative, personal, travel, trip report
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Thanksgiving in Utah
The plan for Thursday was to rise early, rent appropriate gear, and hike/wade Zion's most famous region, The Narrows. Emily woke up not feeling particularly well, however, and so we nixed that and I got breakfast alone while she slept.It was a crisp, quiet morning, and I enjoyed the solitary walk from our motel to a nearby restaurant called The Pioneer, the only place in town open for breakfast Thanksgiving morning. The dim orange walls of Zion hovered quietly nearby, so large, still, and beautiful that they seemed almost surreal.
My walk took me past an elk farm where I was fortunate enough to catch two males in combat, antlers locked together and powerful shoulder muscles twisting in opposition to one another. From time to time, the larger of the two would gain the upper hand and twist the neck of his opponent until the beast whimpered in submission. Then he would release the loser and eye him warily. This proved wise, as the smaller male came back three or four times to test his luck before finally giving up. This was already more excitement than I usually see in a day, and I hadn't even had my coffee yet!
After breakfast and some coaxing, Emily finally felt up to a short hike. We headed for the 
Emerald Pools, a "must see" destination in Zion, and had ourselves a nice hike. We were looking for something very basic, and though this path turned out to be a bit longer and more strenuous than we anticipated, Emily was recovering quickly and ultimately it was a pretty good fit for us.
Emerald Pools, a "must see" destination in Zion, and had ourselves a nice hike. We were looking for something very basic, and though this path turned out to be a bit longer and more strenuous than we anticipated, Emily was recovering quickly and ultimately it was a pretty good fit for us.The path itself followed the banks of the Virgin for a ways through a lightly forested region to the Lower Pools, which was the bottom of three pools formed by water that seemed to cascade out of the rocks themselves. In actuality, this was rainwater that had seeped into the porous sandstone and came to the surface only when it encountered a layer of shale that it could not pass, so in a way, it really was coming out of the rocks. Unfortunately, it hadn't rained in a while, so the cascades were little more than trickles.
The pools themselves, however, were still pretty neat. The slow but steady flow of water had carved an impressive cave into the canyon wall, and the algae in the pools gave them the green color for which they were named. From the right angle, it also lent them a mirrored surface that reflected back the majesty of the nearby cliffs.
After ascending to the highest of the three pools, we made our way back down to the main trail and followed a two-mile loop back to the parking lot. This trek took us along the rim of one of the lower canyon walls and provided some spectacular views of the valley and river below:
By the time we got back to the car, we were quite hungry and looking forward to a big Thanksgiving dinner. The only problem was that we didn't have a reservation anywhere, and only a few of nearby Springdale's restaurants were open to accomodate the swarm of tourists who descended on Zion for a long weekend. Thankfully, a willingness to sit at the bar meant that we were able to get seats right away at The Switchback, where we'd had a delicious meal our first night in the area. They offered a great buffet with a wide variety of entrees, sides, and desserts for something like $30/person. A similar holiday mean in Boston would have been more than twice as much, I'm sure.
The only drawback was that the buffet was poorly laid out and we had to wait in a fairly long line with a bunch of families that, it being Utah, were either Mormon or at least weird. There were a lot of women in plain dresses and unfashionably long hair, well-dressed and well-behaved children, and tall, quiet man with greying, carefully parted hair.
One of these gentlemen was just ahead of me in the line, and for ten minutes or so I had nothing better to do than contemplate what a creepy looking guy he was. He was a slender man and carried himself with an awkwardly stiff posture, wore neatly pressed black slacks with a zip-up red turtleneck thing, and sported one of those conservative haircuts. The creepiest thing by far, however, were his grey eyes that stared straight ahead as though he could see his personal salvation just ahead of him.
When we finally got to the first station, the salad bar, he methodically scooped several tongfuls of lettuce into his bowl, occasionally glancing up at me but saying nothing. He was very insistent on getting a description of each of the eight salad dressings available. When the server finished her litany, the man looked at me as though he and I alone shared in the secret that Our Lord And Savior would not approve of these options, and in fact he walked off without any dressing at all.
I thought nothing further of it until we met again at the bread station. His cold dead eyes locked with mine, and he asked, with no hint of mirth in his voice, "Are you following me?"
After several full-body shivers, I responded, "You must have good taste," but he just turned and walked away without another word.
The line died down after that, so subsequent trips didn't take nearly so long, and all in all it was an enjoyable meal and a great Thanksgiving.
Labels: narrative, personal, travel
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