Thoughts from a “Lost” Canyon

Lost is just another word for changed.

I first walked up this canyon 26 years ago. It was my first “real” backpacking trip. We had done a shakedown trip a few weeks earlier, but that was us just walking down a dirt road for a few miles. This was into a wilderness area, with no support and rough terrain to cover. I don’t recall too much from the hike up (and my journal from this time period, if it did contain anything about it, was stolen in Chile in 2001), but sitting in the door of my tent staring out across the flat, I can remember being in complete awe. I was hooked. All I wanted to do was be in the backcountry.

It became my go-to. It was a quick drive and clicked off most of the boxes. Good views, solitude, rough terrain, etc, etc. It was such a regular in the rotation that KB eventually got sick of it. She didn’t outright ban going there, she just always threw a little fit and suggested other places she would rather venture. I’ve been up this canyon so many times I couldn’t count but hadn’t been up it in several years. As we were walking up, we both tried to remember the last trip and couldn’t come to an agreement on which one it was.

I guess we’re getting old.

Another word for “Development” is Destruction

In its simplest form, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed. The amount of energy in the universe is constant – energy can be changed, moved, controlled, stored, or dissipated. However, this energy cannot be created from nothing or reduced to nothing.

The Conservation of Matter During Physical and Chemical Changes | National Geographic Society

Humans are weird.

We get stuck in ruts and feel like nothing ever changes and then lose our absolute shit when things do change. We tend to do everything within our power to control, prevent and mitigate changes in our environment. Dams are built to hold back water and make sure that the changing seasons can be navigated without concern. The constantly changing surface of our planet is paved over so we can easily maneuver our machines over it. We build houses so we can hide and feel secure in a non-changing box when things we haven’t figured out how to control happen. We try to make everything permanent and managed.

And yet, we all complain about being stuck in a rut and how nothing ever changes.

It is said that Light is a constant. One of the few that exists in our known universe. The funny thing about light is that it is always moving. It can be absorbed, deflected and refracted, but it is constantly moving. The annoying street light that is breaking up the darkness that should be surrounding me as I write these words, has sent light into the universe. It has been doing this for years. The light doesn’t stop. It just keeps going in the direction it was hurled out of the source. It might be one of the greatest contradictions and an irritatingly accurate cliche, but the only constant is change.

The lesson to be learned here is that light is always moving and so is life. While light can be redirected or absorbed, the energy isn’t lost. Life is similar. We often describe it in the idea of direction. Life moves forward. We’ve had a setback as if there was an intended purpose and path that life was going to take regardless of our efforts or the forces surrounding us. Unfortunately, that is entirely inaccurate. Life continues, but the direction is neither predetermined nor set once in motion, it can be deflected and refracted. Where we humans struggle is when we have applied value to the direction we are headed.

And then pretend we have a semblance of control.

And the thunder rolls.

As we turn off the highway and head toward our trailhead, the rain is coming down torrentially. The wipers are whipping across the windshield and failing to keep up with the deluge. Mama Bear and I are having doubts that we will even start this little adventure and if we do, whether that will be a good idea. As we approach the dirt road that will take us to our canyon, the precipitation diminishes and soon the drops are few and far between as we race the Subaru down the gravel road.

Upon reaching the trailhead, we can still hear the thunder rolling in the background. Jax is still losing his shit. He’s overly excited to be outside, as per his norm, but the thunder is also not his favorite. He is visually torn between running around in excitement and finding a place to hide.

Well, if nothing else, this should be interesting.

We strap our packs on double checking that we have rain gear and head up the canyon. The sky is still dark and the fear of being scorched on the hike up the mountain has been replaced by the anxiety of being soaked. The first mile of our hike follows a fenceline. The soil is saturated and walking through low points is slippery and muddy. The dogs still aren’t sure of this whole idea and are skittish.

As we round the corner of the pasture, the creek comes in. I was worried we would be without water for a good chunk of the canyon, but the stream is flowing due to the rain we just rolled through. We can immediately see that there has been a lot of water pouring through. The banks have been washed of sticks and soil and the creek has debris wrapped around trees a few feet above the water. We aren’t sure if this just happened or if it was from a day or two ago. Continuing up the gorge, we slowly realize that this looks to have been a continuous process that has been going on for at least a few weeks.

Soon our astonishment from the debris is replaced by a disorienting realization that this isn’t the same canyon. The trail is gone. The trees that had held our gaze in previous trips are either missing entirely or black posts. The creek that one crosses dozens of times to reach the top was still there, but its course had changed. Drastically in some locations and its banks were up to 30 feet tall. Stream crossings turned into scrambles. Down an eroded bank to the creek and then up the other side. For long stretches, we ended up just walking up the stream as the trail was gone and navigating the drainage was easier than getting out of it.

And then there were the log jams. Huge trees, dozens of them, jammed up against some obstacle usually giant rocks. Under the log jams, you could see where large amounts of water had carved out deep channels in the streambed. The jams would stretch from one side of the canyon to the other and often, from the bottom of the channel, were a solid 30 feet overhead. It was almost like an army of giant beavers had rolled throw trying to give ol’ Floyd Dominy a run for his money by damming one canyon hundreds of times. The only problem with this hypothesis was the lack of chew marks on all the tree trunks.

Just as the last light of the day was beginning to flicker out, we arrived at the flat. I had run through about 8 weeks prior without finding anything out of the ordinary. The majority of the meadow was still there as we walked in, but the stream had changed. The banks were deep cut and you could see that water had flowed over them changing the meadow and the places one would want to camp.

We drop our packs next to a big log and fish out our headlamps. Mama Bear starts to cook dinner and I pitch the tent. The sky is still cloudy and we expect there could be some more precipitation during the night. We crawl into our sleeping bags and fall asleep pondering the immense changes we have seen in the canyon. Both of us can’t help but feel a sense of loss.

DESERVE – do something or have or show qualities worthy of reward or punishment

I hate that word.

I think it’s mostly because there isn’t a way to use it that doesn’t assign meaning to an act or object. There is an implicit level of entitlement to it and in fact, entitle is a synonym. It’s most often employed like this, “She’s such a nice lady. She didn’t deserve for her husband to die so early.” Huh?!? So if she wasn’t a nice lady she would have deserved to lose her partner? And what kind of value is being assigned that you think the results of an occurrence have anything to do with the person’s previous behavior? Humanity is prone to the power of nature. That power doesn’t give a shit about how nice you are or what you think you deserve. It follows natural laws and the chaos that ensues is what you get.

Did my canyon deserve to be burned and flooded? I guess so. It was a nice canyon or at least I always enjoyed its company, its views, its solitude and ruggedness. It never treated me poorly. Sometimes it challenged me, gave me a good banging around, but it was always, according to the value I assigned it, good. And yet, here we are.

It sounds absurd when you use that word to describe what we consider to be inanimate objects, but somehow it’s normal and we feel good about assigning the same value and absurd logic to humanity. Which I guess makes sense. Life is absurd and any meaning you can find from it is only what you assign to it.

Hands in the air emoji. You get what you get.

The morning breaks. We are both tired from our late arrival and we get glimpses of the light arriving over the horizon, but let it be just glimpses. Sleeping in past 7, the meadow is damp and cool as we finally roll over and make our coffee. Having arrived late the night before, we hadn’t got a good view of the meadow. Now as we ready our breakfast, we get the first true idea of what it looks like. In fact, the meadow hasn’t changed much, just the stream and its channel. It’s certainly not as different as the rest of the canyon, but you can tell that a lot of the water that went down originated here.

The morning light provides that warm hue and dewey goodness we have experienced here in the past. It almost feels too familiar like we walked through a strange labyrinth of the unknown only to arrive back at home. Sitting around sipping coffee and eating ramen does not help the situation. In all reality, doing those two things somehow always makes me feel at home especially when there isn’t any cell service.

Having achieved what we were looking for, we ready our packs and head back down the canyon a bit giddy to relive the changes we had observed the day prior.

Lost is just another word for changed.

As we begin the journey back down the canyon, the same one we had referred to as lost the night before, I can’t help but feel that we missed the mark. What we knew of this place no longer fits what it is, but it simply changed its state. I’m sure that at some point in its past, it has been in a similar condition. The canyon is deep. It didn’t get that way by not morphing. If we assume that erosion caused the canyon, then what has happened is just the canyon being a canyon. This is certainly not the first time this forest has burned and I’m certain it won’t be the last. Challenging my old man memory, I can recall times in the past when the monsoons rolled through and suddenly the trail was the stream or the stream became the trail. The change was less dramatic, but it was still a loss of what I had experienced.

Each step not only feels like a trip back toward the past, but an opening into new adventures in a place we had kind of given up on due to its familiarity. I am captured by the beauty of the forest regenerating and find myself admiring rocks and ridges that were invisible under the cloak of the thick forest that existed before. The canyon that was, is gone, but the canyon that is, is just as spectacular.

The log jams still inspire awe as we see them from slightly different angles. The water that came through here was intense. The chaos that the storms and floods would have created blows my mind. As my thoughts swirl around Chaos, I can’t help but feel that we humans need to embrace the idea of change. Instead of holding on to what is or was, we need to embrace impermanence.

It’s not something that fills my thoughts often, but about once a year, my anxiety will start to swirl around what-ifs. What if I lose my job? What if Kathleen dies? What if the whole world economy goes to shit? What if this drought never stops and we no longer have any water coming down the Colorado? If I leave it unchecked, it can quickly turn into an overwhelming sense of dread.

So I fire myself.

It’s a stoic practice, although I didn’t know it when I started to do it. You take a worry, something you are anxious about and list out the worst-case scenarios. What if I lose my job? What would I do? Well, that one is pretty easy for me to overcome. Being homeless is really just an unending backpacking trip if you are able to look at it in that light. A job is necessary because we assign value to things it provides. If you are able to look at those things, disconnect and understand that they are impermanent, aren’t actually yours, and can be taken away at any time, well, the job has a lot less importance.

And to be honest, that one’s pretty easy for me. As much as I like the stuff and life that KB and I have built together, I often fantasize, and have since I was a kid, of leaving everything. You know, strapping a backpack on, walking out the front door and never looking back. Losing everything isn’t something I fear, at least on a logical front.

To embrace chaos is to understand that curveballs are coming. Life is not a trajectory that will continue in the direction you hope. You don’t deserve anything, bad or good. Life is just what it is, chaos. Neverending change. Loss.

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The sign that marks our exit from the “Wilderness” comes into view and we walk right past it. The pasture fence directs us away from the stream we have been following all morning and soon we are walking on what could be a road. The nostalgia for a canyon I knew has been replaced by the excitement of new adventures in a canyon I barely recognize. After just a couple of hours walking, we re-emerge into the constant that we know. Our car is sitting right where we left it and the key still turns the ignition. The thoughts of what we have witnessed, along with a few pictures, are all that we have. We leave the rough road for pavement and soon are back at the Lounge sipping a beer, slowly forgetting our impermanence and enjoying the little bit of constant in our lives.

P. L. and R.