Backpacking in Spring Canyon

Day 1 – May, 2021

A Hallway of Stone, A Ribbon of Sky

I STAND IN A hallway of stone. The sky, a thin, winding ribbon of cerulean above me. Millions of years of the geologic record soar overhead, a towering dominion of arcane time. In fact, the rock record here displays nineteen different formations, more than any other National Park in America (yes, more even than the Grand Canyon). The sheer depth of time covered here is staggering to behold. Craning my head to take it in gives me vertigo, from a spatial perspective or a chronological overload, I’m not sure. I feel miniscule, insubstantial, like a grain of sand on a beach among a universe of beaches. These are typical feelings when you go backpacking in Spring Canyon in Capitol Reef National Park.

I contemplate the aesthetics of the place, instead. That I can handle, can absorb. At sundown from my camp in Chimney Rock Canyon, the walls constrict. I drop my pack in a dry tributary that funnels down into the canyon proper. It’s elevated, flat, sandy, and just big enough for my Tarptent. I strip and walk in the sand (sand that was once a dune, then turned to stone, then eroded to sand once more) down the wash, toes curling, the breeze against my exposed skin is refreshing. Dipping my hands in the sand, I scrub them together vigorously. I imagine the exfoliating action, the sloughing away of bad skin, dead skin, useless cells. My body is now rid of excess baggage. It’s like a purging ritual.

I return to camp and don all my layers: long underwear top and bottom, skullcap, running pants, puffy jacket. The canyon is now in deep shadow, the sun shining in another world all but removed from this one down here. I keep my feet bare a little longer to enjoy that direct connection to Mother Earth.

In my tent later, I lay stressed and slightly wigged out. Just that morning I had led my normal life. It was Friday. I had taken the day off. I woke early and helped my wife and two older daughters out the door. Then, I took my youngest daughter to school and said a hasty goodbye from the front seat, contorting myself around to squeeze her shoulder, trying to catch her eye to wish her a good day at school, as she slipped out the back door. Leaving the parking lot, I gained the highway and the adventure began.

My thoughts, spun into a frenzy from the typical weekday morning routine, started spiraling into monkey mind—the flitting of seemingly unrelated items flashing past like a highlight reel. As I sped through the Eisenhower Tunnel, over Vail Pass, into the ragged western slope towns of Rifle and Parachute, then across the border into the wastelands of eastern central Utah and finally turned south toward Hanksville, I glanced at all my gear in the way back. I hoped I hadn’t forgotten anything crucial while packing the night before.

The final few items I needed became foremost as I passed the last vestiges of civilization: food for dinner, water to fill my bottles, and a few more snacks. Thoughts of school, my children, my wife, work; all the things from my back-there life began to zero in on the present as they turned toward my here-now life. Where was I going to camp? Was I sure I had everything? Did I have enough food for four days out here? Water? What about cougars? Flash floods? 

There’s a point in every trip I take where the back-there life and the here-now life meet. As if the twin vortices of those two entities, giant triangular worlds containing everything within them, make contact at the very sharp tip of each. I pass from one to the other and everything changes. Like Clark Kent going into a phone booth and Superman coming out. (Considering I wear khakis and button-downs to work, yet in the backcountry adopt the irresistibly rugged man-against-nature bravado, it’s a fitting metaphor.) I leave the family-man, working-man life behind and enter the adventure-man life. This places me completely in the present moment, the transition point having peeled away past and future. 

I discovered, as I prepared my gear in the parking lot, that I had indeed forgotten something crucial: tent stakes. Hard to pitch a tent without them. So I climbed back into the car and drove to the closest gas station on a long shot. The world was turning in my favor that night, however, as the proprietor was a problem solver. She obviously had no tent stakes among the aisles of corn nuts and Hostess cakes, but she did have extra peg hooks for her product display racks. I was out the door with four of them, the same amount of money I went in with, and a new appreciation for people. Then, back to the parking lot to reload all my gear.

Now, here I was deep in canyon country and I was frazzled.

What a long, long day.

Peg hooks, I thought, looking at the taut inner walls of my pitched tent, genius.

Day 2

My Adventure Avatar

I SEE THE “W” and it looks very high. The National Park route description says to look for two deep “clefts” in the Wingate sandstone. These clefts form the W. It is through this feature that you access Upper Spring Canyon from the Sulphur Creek drainage. They say the route “does not require ropes or climbing.” What they should say is that a third lung would be helpful.

My backpack is hefty. As it usually is, but especially when backpacking in Spring Canyon. I have four days of food, and two gallons of water, which equates to twenty-six pounds: ten for the food, sixteen for the water. (I intend to replenish my water at a natural spring farther down the canyon. That is, if it hasn’t run dry.) Then: tent, sleeping bag and pad, stove, fuel, clothing, GPS, SPOT, phone, maps, camp chair, water filter, camera, hiking poles, journal, metal spoon for a poop trowel, and an old green alien figurine that came out of a toy slime container, the sort kids often receive in goody bags at birthday parties.

For some reason this little green alien, a mere two inches in height, has joined me on numerous outings over the years. He is faded and chipped. I send pictures of him in various poses (on top of rocks, next to cacti, in a field of flowers) to the girls back home. It’s a nice way to share my adventures. The alien is my adventure avatar.

From my camp the previous night, I hiked back out to the highway and turned off on Holt Draw Road, which took me into the Sulphur Creek drainage. This particular route has no trail. The National Park route description tells you to follow this “wash” to that “rib” to this “horse trail” to that “bench.” All very vague. I use the topo maps that I printed at home to find the route up to the W. It involves a steep ascent of loose, angular boulders. My pack gnaws at my shoulders, my quads burn, my hands are swollen. But I’m moving under my own power, carrying everything I need to survive through rugged, isolated, deserted country in a wilderness that speaks to me. It says that I am in the right place, doing the right thing, that nothing else matters, that this place, the here-now, is the most important place in the world. That I shouldn’t be anywhere else and that I’m meant to be here.

Of course, my mind still lingers in the past. My achilles heel. I will always have this seed of guilt that tells me I can’t just flee from the world and hide out in the backcountry. There are responsibilities, I am a husband and father, after all. I am supposed to provide, to be a man. Can I do that if I follow my heart into the wilds of the world? If this is where I’m meant to be, then how do I reconcile that reality with the duties to my family that reside in the back-there? This duality in my life plagues me. My desire for isolation, and the open road, makes me an outsider in the real world, an individual on the fringes with no sense of belonging. I wish that I could be like everybody else, who at least appear to be fine living the nine to five life, but I can’t. I need to be free, yet I’m stymied by guilt that I’m neglecting my obligations. I fear that I am difficult to be around when the need for flight arises, I become a grump, full of self-pity. Oh, how unfair that I can’t be out in the wilds, free from all this life-sapping monotony, I think. I don’t want to make another doctor’s appointment, or look at another bill, or rake the leaves, or run to the grocery store, or load the goddamn dishwasher one more fucking time! Please, there must be more!

Like I said, I’m a work in progress with “normal” life. I am a hopeless romantic. Life will never live up to my expectations. But sometimes, when I’m schlepping a backpack or bike through an indifferent wilderness that cares nothing for me or about me, it does. The wilderness has no expectations for me, makes no snap judgments. It truly does not care. I will never have to wonder what it thinks of me.

I make it up into the W and stand in a crevice of rock while the world falls away steeply to the north and south: Spring Canyon in front, Sulphur Creek behind. A natural ladder to the pinnacle of the Waterpocket Fold, a one hundred mile long warp in the Earth’s crust, or a monocline in the vernacular; the defining feature of Capitol Reef (“capitol” for the dome-like rock formations of the Navajo sandstone that resemble capitol buildings, and “reef”, from the early travelers, often sailors, who described such impediments to travel that the uplifted rocks presented, as reefs). 

I now face a daunting descent into Spring Canyon. I’m scratched and sweaty at the bottom, but I’m in. The way is clear now: down-canyon. That’s not to say it’s easy. The occasional pour-off halts forward progress in its tracks. Some of them are sheer fifty-foot drops. These require dangerous hikes up to the canyon rim to find an alternate way down to the canyon floor below the pour-off. In one, I simply have to slide on my backside down a loose, 45° slope, hoping I don’t rip something or lose control. My heavy pack makes it difficult to maneuver.

I pitch my tent that night to the lonely caw of crows. As they fly overhead I can hear the distinct flapping of their wings, a whooshing tremolo, like fingernails on corduroy, against the grain. Vultures circle silently like watchful wraiths. The canyon walls absorb the sun and glow in a warm radiance. I stand and take it in. The sheer cliffs of sandstone evince a period of Sahara-like sand dunes, while other formations of crumbly mudstones and shales speak to times of swamplands. The whole history of the world seems to be writ on those walls of rock. The sense of deep time resonates within me. I cannot fully grasp it, yet I’m left feeling calm. I know these landscapes will be here for as long as I need them. 

What worries me is whether they will be here for as long as my children need them.

Day 3

Hallway to Nowhere

IN THE MORNING, I crawl out of my tent and the world is so still I can barely move. It feels as though I’ll shatter the delicate balance. I move slowly, methodically. First, I relieve myself. I watch my pee percolate into the sand. The back-there has finally slipped away. My monkey mind has been replaced with a sort of stasis. I am neither here nor there. This is a state I seek, that I can never find at home. When enough of the natural world has seeped into my psyche, I find a solace there, as if a cavity has been filled. A cavity that slowly empties when I return. There is nothing else that can fill this particular cavity. It’s that part of me that was meant for nature. I believe we all have this hole in ourselves. The longer we go without nature, the more it eats away at us, until we feel hollow, like a dry husk. Perhaps some of us don’t know how to fill it, or even recognize that time in nature is the answer. They say that twenty minutes a day in nature is enough. If you’re too busy to manage twenty minutes, then you need an hour.

Forest bathing is a real thing. I once discovered this on the Colorado Trail near Buena Vista. The Japanese call it Shinrin-yoku: the simple act, or art, of spending time in a forest. The health benefits are apparent to anyone who has done so: improved sleep, peace of mind, more energy, more curiosity in the world around you, elevated engagement among those in your life. In Buena Vista, I stood in a stand of aspen trees. It was October. The leaves were gold, the bark white, the sky cobalt. The breeze rustled the dry leaves together in a subtle and pleasing crepitation. My mind evaporated, simply emptied itself. I went home and told my wife that I knew she needed a forest bath, too.

Now, in Spring Canyon in Capitol Reef, while not a forest, I still feel that same sense of unburdening. The tension in my shoulders uncoils. My mind floats outward, not inward.

For breakfast, I have a tortilla with three slices of microwavable bacon (precooked), slices of an avocado that is somehow still fresh, two hard-boiled eggs that are getting a little rank, and a packet of Texas Pete hot sauce that I filched from the hot dog bar at the gas station. It’s delicious, but then again everything eaten in camp is delicious. I would never eat this particular combination of items back home (certainly not the two day-old gas station hard-boiled eggs). I wash it down with bitter coffee. For a work surface, I use a small pour-off near my camp. The face of the pour-off is a striated wall of mudstones. Each layer creates a small shelf; on this one: my stove; on that one: my water bottle, and on this one: my coffee cup.

 As I continue down-canyon the walls close in on me. They grow in height. Shadows increase and I am plunged into a nether world. The rock is tinged in hues of rust reds, Pepto-Bismol pinks, battleship grays and mottled blacks: sandstones, shales, siltstones, mudstones, and the otherworldly black andesite boulders from ancient lava flows. In tune with a sense of discovery and wonder is a nagging fear that there’s only one way out of this canyon. It’s a trap.

At the spring, which is thankfully flowing (I’d been working on my exit plan if it turned out to be dry), I filter water and refill all my empty water bladders. I can carry a total of two gallons. My water filter is a compression style model. I slide out the filter insert, fill the container, then push the insert back into the container, forcing the water through the filter. As I can only filter 16 oz. at a time, it takes me quite a while to fill two gallons. My arms are toast afterwards. I like that it takes a fair amount of elbow grease to push the water through, makes me think it’s getting that water nice and clean. 

Clouds overhead worry me. A flash flood would be…I’d rather not think about it. I scout the sides of the canyon for high ground. Just in case. I have to divert on a sketchy trail over loose scree across the fall line, having “severe exposure” as the National Park says, at another pour-off. A one hundred foot fall would bring me to rest on the canyon floor. Bruised and broken, no doubt. 

This isolation (I have seen only one person in two days) is comforting to me. Backpacking in Spring Canyon effectively severs you from society at large. I have no problems being alone. I seek it and cherish it. Often, people’s first question upon learning that I am going into the backcountry for a while is, “Who are you going with?” They always seem surprised, or even affronted, that I would go alone. “Geez, be careful,” they say. “Don’t you get lonely?” they ask. Or, “What about wild animals?” Wendy is used to it, she understands this urge in me. Or, at least, I think she does.

Edward Abbey, that desert roaming maverick of “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and “Desert Solitaire” fame, said this once: “I find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time” He wouldn’t have asked me if I got lonely.

I pitch my tent at the mouth of a slot canyon, or “narrows” as they are referred to in canyon country parlance. If a storm cell settled over country up-canyon I would be in dire straits here. The narrows are thirty feet high, but the canyon above this (wider than the narrows) is six hundred feet higher still. In full darkness I enter the narrows. The walls, ten feet apart, come straight down to the sandy floor of the canyon. They are fluted and sculpted as if by a master stone carver. Shadows dart this way and that. Abruptly, this natural hallway ends in a vertical thirty-foot wall. A hallway to nowhere.

Day 4

So Much to See, So Little Time

THE LOWER SECTION OF Spring Canyon is a world unto itself. A hidden world. A world of verticality. Skyscrapers of stone over an ancient thoroughfare of sand. I feel as if I have fallen into a crack in the Earth. I long for the big skies above, yet feel incredibly grateful to be here in the heart of the world.

There are more people down here, though. I no longer have the planet to myself. I am jolted by this fact. Other people! What right do they have to impinge on my little fiefdom! 

Near the mouth, as I gratefully approach the Fremont River, a giant alcove opens beneath the south wall. I sit underneath and listen to the sounds echoing out from behind me. Rock arches overhead. I can feel the tremendous weight and for a brief moment an electric spike of claustrophobia surges through me. Must escape! But it subsides and I relax and eat lunch under millions of years of history.

Stripping off my ankle gaiters, shoes and socks, I wade out into the icy river. It is only shin deep. The water feels therapeutic on my sore and aching feet and calves. Here, Spring Canyon meets state Route 24. The canyon has disgorged me from its bowels. I walk a short distance down the highway, feeling naked and exposed in the real world once again, and then, blissfully, turn off into Grand Wash. This majestic wash is as flat as a bocce court. Another hallway into deep time. The walls here are polished smooth. They soar overhead and the act of trying to look to the tops again brings me vertigo. I turn my hat around backwards to better take stock of the vertiginous landscape. Passing through the narrows I enter the gorge.

Just south of here—a year and one month later—multiple cars were destroyed and sixty people were stranded in a flash flood. The visitors, on that day in June, arrived at the trailhead to scattered cloud cover. A small shower had passed earlier, wetting the windshields of some vehicles. A larger shower caught many at the trailhead prior to their hike. They sheltered under the pavilion as the shower turned to hail and then heavy rain. As they watched, in growing fear, hearts no doubt pounding in their chests, dirty waterfalls began pouring off the cliffs all around. Realizing their grave predicament at the low point of a steep gorge, they ran for their cars. Some made it to high ground on the road to wait it out in their vehicles. Others were caught at low points in the wash, which doubles in many places as the road, as a torrent of mud and debris came toward them. The flood lifted their vehicles and took them with it, slamming them into rocks and canyon walls as they went. Video of the event shows people sitting in their cars being whisked downstream as muddy water sloshes up over their hoods and through open windows into their laps. Miraculously, no one was seriously injured. 

I climb out of the gorge and follow the Frying Pan Trail to Cassidy Arch. This arch is unusual in that you can walk across it. It’s more of a bridge. I stand on top, all that open air beneath making me giddy, and gaze at the wall of Navajo sandstone across the gorge. This layer sits on top of the Wingate formation. It catches the last of the sun and ignites. I see why the park has its name. The Navajo formation weathers in an unusual way creating great big domes, among them Ferns Nipple.

For dinner I boil Japanese buckwheat noodles in my one liter pot over my canister stove. I drain the water carefully so I don’t dump my dinner in the dirt, and add the following: a pouch of salmon, parmesan cheese, a packet of pesto, a packet of olive oil and crushed red pepper. My backcountry camping permit allows me to camp anywhere in the park outside of established campgrounds. On this night I have a spectacular view of Grand Wash, Cassidy Arch and Fern’s pointy nipple out there as I sit on my Thermarest and eat in companionable silence with myself. 

Sartre once said that “if you are lonely when you are alone then you are in bad company.” I have never had to worry about that, I’m perfectly comfortable alone. I try to tell myself that it’s bad for me; that I need community and honest human connection in my life; that people who have friends live longer. All these things are true. It still doesn’t change the fact that I enjoy being alone. Crave it, in fact. Jim Carrey, who suffered from depression, thinks that isolation is dangerous, that solitude can become like a drug. The peace and calm of it is seductive and addicting and other people drain your energy. Now, this could be true. I do find, upon returning to civilization after successive days in the backcountry, that the real world is uncomfortably jarring. Everything is brighter, faster, louder. I feel pressured to make decisions, to confront things, to talk to people. I get worn out quickly. It can take a day or so to settle back into the swing of things. And, of course, the end result of that re-acclimatization process is that I just want to head back out into the wild lands where I feel unencumbered and comfortable with who I am. Yet, all that being said, I find that this kind of solitude—as opposed to screen time and the strange New World-solitude of AI companions—does make me eager to get back into the fray. As hard as it can be to readjust, I am happy to do it.

As the sun finally sets, I brew some tea and sit in the darkness looking at the stars, sipping my hot cuppa cradled in my hands. I think about all the new country I’ve seen in just these past few days. Then I think about all the incredible wonders waiting around a billion corners out there for us. So much to see, so little time. Sometimes I worry that I will spend my life trying to see everything while never fully appreciating what I have. That I’ll get to the end and worry I didn’t do enough. This restless urge keeps me seeing new places and taking new adventures and so I’m thankful for it. Yet, it also leaves me feeling unfinished, unsatiated. My own twin towers of vacillation; one pushing, the other pulling.

My tea is cold. I dump out the dregs and go about cleaning up camp. It doesn’t take long. Food goes in the big ziploc which itself goes in the stuff sack along with the stove, teapot, cookpot, fuel canister, lighter and mug. I shove that deep into my pack. My shirt, stiff from dried sweat like a starched collar, is hanging on a tree. I’ll leave that out overnight, unless the winds pick up. Other odds and ends go into the backpack and I cinch it up tight, tuck it under a gnarly limb of a Utah juniper and cover it with a rock to prohibit any curious critters. Before climbing into my tent I need to relieve myself. I head to the canyon rim and urinate into Grand Wash. It’s doubtful whether any of my pee makes it to the bottom.

I climb into my tent and sprawl on my back. It takes a moment to adjust and is slightly uncomfortable until it’s not. Then, the lack of forward motion and an end to external stimuli is welcome. I close my eyes and see flashes of prismatic light behind my eyelids, finally those cease and the stillness and blackness overcome me.

I wake later and, ugh, need to pee again. The stars are so brilliant I can see by starlight alone. The sky is awash. I am dazzled beyond words. The spice of life flows across my synapses. It, or the chill in the air, brings goosebumps to my arms and chest. I feel my skin constricting because of them and, after a breathless moment gazing at the surreal expanse of our planet before me, hurry back to the warmth of my sleeping bag once again. 

Day 5 – Final day of backpacking in Spring Canyon

Desert Rat

IN THE MORNING, THE memory of standing on the canyon rim in the starlight is like a dream. Did it really happen? I pack up camp once more, my fingers, hands and arms toughened and strong from the constant packing and unpacking of my gear and the cinching of straps and buckling of buckles and zipping of zippers. My kit is tight now. Everything has found its place. My clothing has developed a patina of dust and dirt. My skin is bronzed and encased in an impenetrable layer of dust mixed with sunscreen mixed with dust mixed with…I have become a desert rat through these days of backpacking in Spring Canyon. Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of that. Perhaps that’s to blame for my lordly air as I pass day-hikers in Crocs. I hike through the parking lot to a picnic bench beneath an absolutely gargantuan cottonwood tree in Fruita, Utah. It’s the Mail Tree. In the late 1880s mailboxes were attached to the tree providing a central place for the scattered, and no doubt hardy, denizens to receive their letters. The mailboxes are long gone. The bark of the tree is so deeply wrinkled I could lose my book in the folds. It would take four of me, hand in hand, to wrap fully around it.

I met another person backpacking in Spring Canyon two days ago. She comes walking across the grass, now. Somehow, we crossed paths twice in the canyons. The second time was a surprise. Now, for the third time, I’m even more surprised to see her and wonder how it is she’s here.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says. “How’d the rest of your hike go?”

“Ahh,” I make a sound between a relieved sigh and an exclamation of joy, “it was unreal. You?”

“Incredible! I’m actually just heading back to Boulder now. Finished my hike yesterday and camped in the campground here last night.”

“Nice.” I am still adjusting to civilization and the knack for maintaining conversation is coming back slowly.

“Look, I just wanted to thank you for being, you know, helpful and not…creepy or anything. This was my first solo, so I was a little nervous. But you made me feel good about it. You just have a nice vibe. So, thanks.”

I’m taken aback. She is at least ten, maybe fifteen, years younger. Her gear is clean and polished. She’s inexperienced. I see a piece of myself in her desire to head off alone. “Well, of course, that’s what I’m here for,” I say, feeling silly for saying it. “I’m glad it worked out for you,” I add, more sincerely this time.

She hops in her Subaru and is gone.

I liked thinking that my presence and demeanor had put her at ease. It helps reassert my belief in my own abilities to be communal. That she appreciated my expertise—I remembered giving her information on where to find the spring and tips for choosing good campsites—gives me a sense of having mastery in something. What do we really need in this life, after all? A sense of belonging, a sense of mastery, and the realization that people need us for our specialized or unique know-how. I think that is what brings happiness. They say it’s different for everyone; I do believe those are three keys to it, however.

I sit for a while and watch the world go by. Nothing much passes, it’s a lonely place. The National Park continues to maintain the one hundred year-old orchards that dot the landscape around Fruita, including apples, peaches, pears, cherries, mulberries, apricots, plums, walnuts and almonds. A veritable feast of diversity in an otherwise bleak and barren place. The carefully tended and irrigated orchards are in stark contrast to the world of primordial rock that surrounds them. The Fremont River makes it all possible; it is a linear refuge of life out here.

I finish my coffee and, once again, pack my things. I still have food for one more night and the time off to make it happen. I’m not expected home till tomorrow. But, and without any regret, I realize that I’m finished. I’ve seen enough. It’s time to go home. Perhaps the chat with my friend changed things. Perhaps if she hadn’t been there I wouldn’t have felt the pull of home; that tantalizing lure of comfort and ease and loved ones eager to see me. I could have plunged back into the wilds for another night, but alas, it’s not to be. I sling my pack up onto my back and head off down the road.

The final three miles of my fifty-mile hike are on state Route 24. Cars zing by at 70 mph. I blast tunes through my earbuds (Tom Petty’s “Straight into Darkness” puts a serious spring in my step, while Ben Harper’s “Number Three” makes me deeply nostalgic of a trip that hasn’t even ended yet) and imagine everybody driving by saying to their partner, “Woah, where’s that guy been?” I like to flatter myself. There’s no one else out here to do so. With every step, I feel the real world calling me back to its deceptively comforting fold. I like to think I am hardened, that my capability for resilience is increased, by adversity. There’s nothing but softness and weakness in comfort.

The special moments I had in the wilderness will stay here. The only real regret of hiking and adventuring alone is that my memories are mine alone. Mine and Mother Nature’s. I can try to share them with loved ones back home, but they never come out right. My experiences are different when I go solo and that’s the whole point; to reach the level of intensity and immersion only attainable when by oneself. I never pine too much when I can’t properly answer the question, “How was it?”

When I finally see my car, windshield glinting in the sunshine, I feel a twinge of remorse. Maybe I should have stayed out one more night? It’s not as if I’m going to be back soon. The call of solitude is ringing out to me. And those peg hooks worked really well as tent stakes. And this place is so unbelievable. I could…nah. 

It’s time to go home.