8 April, Zion NP, UT

Smell of woodsmoke and noise of humans surround me. Somewhat disappointing after all the wilderness but the wilderness did make me sleep in the car last night and I am glad of an opportunity to be horizontal.

Took a little hike to the top of the hill behind the campsite, which afforded views of the canyon and visual contact with a pine siskin who was hanging out with some house finches. Saw some sort of wren, an RC kinglet, and heart much more. Either I am tired or else the unfamiliarity of the landscape makes it difficult to know how to look. One has to think a little like a bird to spot a bird, and I don’t know what I’m looking at. Certainly in the Rockies now, after leaving DV through classic Basin and Range topography – high peaks with slanted stratification towering over valleys more or less filled by the eroded flanks of the mountains. Beautiful wide fans of a dark rocky material covered with broom and sage. Bits of color, like the red bluffs I descended through west of Las Vegas, but of course nothing like here. The rock erodes here differently, having been laid down in layers that are more or less competant, and which wear and joint differently from granite. I don’t know enough geology but what little I do makes the landscape come alive. Almost no systematic knowledge, really, just a conviction gleaned from Jn Mcphee that an amateur can learn to see the workings of basic forces through time. Slowly adjusting my perceptions, making guesses. Hopefully the birds will start to appear once I have deciphered their habitat.

Snatiches of conversation overheard on the trail. Subdued fights, character analyses of workmates, woes of the job. Not much different down here. People seem to bring their problems with them. Then travel in so much comfort there is no chance for survival or even simple camp chores to distract them.

The contradictions of national parks. Why are they here? To allow people access to unspoiled nature, or historical sites, but access has a way of spoiling things. There is a little too much of the Hoover Dam about a lot of parks, a gee-whiz mentality, a tendency to think the world can be adequately observed from a car. The focus is on stunning scenery, and you have to tame it, at least a little, to let people see it. The tunnel here, the going-to-the-sun road in Glacier. So most people appreciate NPs from cars and RVs. Which is better than being cooped up in cities, better than thinking nature superfluous, but the danger is that people will assume nature is nice views, and that it’s being preserved just fine. Not that I claim any special status. Here I am in a Mazda Navajo that gets 20 mpg on a good day. My own means of appreciating nature, out in the backcountry, aren’t sustainable in any quantity whatsoever. It would be the height of arrogance to think I can just drive out here for my own pleasure or even for scientific knowledge. The only way to know a place like this is to live here, and that’s probably the least sustainable option.

People who try to figure out how humans can fit their minds and bodies into the world, the world as it is and not some pathetic reconstruction, have so much of my respect.

(cdm, in ContinuingEastwards | 8April2006 )