by Pete Garay.
Way back when, an invisible hand lent shape to the world and, over time, balance, color and movement were blended in. By the end of this chaotic and sweaty job, I think our majesties were well fashioned.
In 1895, Katharine Lee Bates recognized all this and as such aptly put words to the creator’s handiwork. Appearing first as a poem, her memorializing words, “for purple mountain majesties,” helped illuminate America’s wild beauty.
One such place where Bates’ lingering sentiments may still be observed are in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park.
We had parked our car close to the beaten trailhead that led off across a landscape of ochre- colored, flat as a pancake, sandstone rock. A small sign planted here signaled where the trail split into different sections about a mile in. From this point, the vastness of the park would reveal itself.
“C’mon, slowpoke.” my wife coaxed teasingly.
Trodding along behind everyone else in our company, I complained, “My feet hurt.”
About then, our group overtook an elderly woman making her way along the trail. As she hunched over her walker, I noticed she was sporting a sizable pair of binoculars that could have been used to spy on the man in the moon. Placing each step, like a Tortoise, she was clump, clump, clumping along. Her heavy gait was due in large part because she didn’t have the benefit of one of those snappy-looking roller-operated jobbers. Instead, hers was the kind of contraption one might find at a thrift store. Bent up, having long lost its rubber feet that were once attached to the walker’s hollow and unseaworthy-looking legs.
Grip, lift, place, one step, and then steady up. All a thousand times over. “Hmnn.” I said to myself, “Pretty cool that she has traveled this far to bear witness to one of creations finest monuments.” Observing her further as we strode on by, I went on thinking, “To bad she’s not going to make it much further.”
As we continued walking the views began to expand. In the distance the parks flat topped Mesa’s mated evenly with the horizon. Above, hung a King’s blue light sky in the middle of which sailed two large raptors with their fingertip feathers stretched wide.
A few minutes later, we arrived at the trail’s junction. Spotting a comfortable-looking bench, I sat down. As I appeared to have settled in for the day, my wife queried, “What are you doing? C’mon, get up and let’s go, the best is yet to come.”
“Nah, you guys go on ahead,” I said. “This trail is getting hard on my feet. I’ll wait here until you get back.”
Seeing I had planted myself more permanently than the scrubby little juniper pines rooted around me, she quickly marched off with the rest of our friends.
Left alone, the quiet beauty rolled in, like an advancing fog bank enveloping me. On the rock next to me was a yellow-headed lizard that kept sticking its tongue out at me. I tossed a pine cone at him, whereby the little dragon sprung upright and bolted away on its two hind legs.
“El Gecko of the Canyonlands,” I mused. “Not such a tough guy after all.”
I heard her approaching before I saw her. Given her disability, I was all but certain the woman we had left in the dust would also surrender herself to a well-earned rest on the bench. “Good,” I thought, we could both share in the solitude.
But no, it was not to be. Instead, as she was passing, she paused and slightly swiveled her head in my direction and gave me a tortured small smile. Then, in a barely audible voice, said, “It’s all so beautiful, maybe I’ll keep going all the way.”
“All the way where?” I responded.
“Over there,” she replied as she hoisted up her rackety apparatus and pointed its bare feet at the distant vista we were both admiring.
Before she pressed on I noticed in her weathered face the wince from some crippling pain as she put down the walker and struggled once again to move forward into the majestic. A free spirit. Undeterred to explore the beyond with little regard as to how she would return.
Watching her walk away I asked myself, “But what explorer worth their own salt ever worried about the path back from any difficult journey taken?”
Glancing down I contemplated my own aching feet. When I looked back up to see how the old gal was faring she was gone. I immediately got up and hurried over to where I last spotted her but she was nowhere to be found. Cupping my hands around the corners of my mouth I shouted, “Hello! Hello! Are you Ok?” Only the Canyonlands echoed back. Several more calls in different directions produced the same results. My lone voice.
Perched on the canyons crusty rim I gazed below at the base of a steep sandstone wall where I watched the Green River churn itself up before continuing on its way towards the sea.
So to this voyaging stranger, and others like her, I bow low. And for a land that continues to endure, I give thanks.