I can’t think of many things that are more beautiful than the autumn sunlight as it plays off of sandstone. All the harshness of the sun’s blazing summer self has faded as it makes its way across the narrow piece of sky I can see from the bottom of the Paria Canyon. On this late October day I scamper higher up the wall, following the sun like a lizard.
I have just been dropped off by the horse packer, Justin, a cowboy out of Cedar City, Utah who packs people and gear into the wilderness for a living as well as occasionally driving cows between the high and low country for his family’s livestock operation. Today he carried the food and gear for our Grand Canyon Trust volunteer crew to spend a week in the depths of the Paria Canyon killing invasive tamarisk trees. We got five miles in where the canyon narrows to less than 20 feet wide before we encountered the first chest-deep pool—remnants of a mid-September flood that scoured out several like it, making the task at hand slightly more daunting.
During our ride I discover that Justin is yet another soul who would relish in the death of this greedy tree who has achieved dominance over the majority of our desert streams. I also sense a quiet fervor for wilderness and cottonwood trees as he talks about the places he works—Kanab Creek, the Virgin River, the Paria. I suppose it isn’t that hard to become passionate about desert streams. The fact is they are pure magic. They are havens from the harsh, dusty desert teaming with life. Today I encountered a tarantula, a hawk clutching its prey, a floating chipmunk, and a sphinx moth larvae chewing on a sacred datura plant. When you consider the rustling of cottonwood leaves as their goldenness sparkles against the breeze then you understand why some of us will go to great lengths to remove tamarisk from the picture. Luckily we are not alone. There are many who are willing to sign on for a week of hard labor in exchange for wildness, beauty, fellowship and food.
My thoughts lead me to the lonesome vagabond life of young Everett Ruess, who traveled these very canyons with his two burros. He explored many beautiful places that he did “not wish to taste, but to drink deep.” He lived a life in search of beauty, only to be swallowed by the vast landscape of southern Utah never to be seen again. The recent discovery of remains near Bluff, Utah was thought to be those of Ruess, but more extensive analysis has refuted earlier DNA evidence.
Part of me is comforted by the abiding mystery of his death. I feel a certain strange comfort knowing that it was possible to disappear and never be found, that such wilderness existed. And it makes me wonder if a person could still meet the same unresolved ending in this same somewhat less wild landscape. Had he lived, Ruess would be 94 years old today and witnessed startling changes in the land he loved. What would he have to say about tamarisk? Would he take up a saw in defense of his beloved declining desert streams?
I think he is lucky to have missed out on the last 75 years of “progress” in the West. Sure, we love our Ipods, and vehicles can get us where we want to go, but I hear him even today, arguing for the music of a trickling stream. In the last letter Ruess wrote to his brother, dated November 11, 1934 he wrote: “I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities."
Justin said it best as we ambled deeper into the Paria Canyon, as he looked back at his pack horses, loaded with food and a 5-gallon bucket that serves as our leave-no-trace toilet. “Heck, we got all that we need right here.”
Indeed, we do.
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