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Show JUST GET TmUpLMS r - - ' at. iT.' ... j, n; ' , - -. -tr''- , , vtfcito" . -.-'". "XU- I y --iiif mil. , ; .. '"N. J - " , f-. ' I II t" - v - t K ,, w- 11 I !; . - " ' , ' ' III i , v v 'v " " """"-- J 111 i rh 1 "'-- - . - - '.v .3 ' j STOBY AND PHOTOS BY BELL MARLING Levari. Traffic is thinning out. Signs say Big Rock Candy Mountain is coming up 4 miles Good Food -Reasonable Rates Next Bend Turn Right "Jeez, what an outrageous mountain! " "Looks like it's covered with lime green felt!" "Yeah!" "No, it's only some weird colored sandstone . . ." Come to Fayette, and there's not a living soul to be seen. Sign says "Utah's Best Aprons." Pass without buying any. Flash through Spry, Panguitch, and Tropic. The road is a speeding ribbon to nowhere and we want to get there fast. Henrieville. Was that Henrieville? Looks n-. shoot first and ask questions later. Don't blink miss it. No cars now. just us and the raw land. A great-- ! with wings six feet wide rises with slow strokes k air. The land opens up. Gray valleys roll up inor red mountains. Makes you want to put a handr range and a hand on those mountains and puU-gether puU-gether like a modern Paul Bunyan. Fine counh Stop to buy food and gas in Escalante. It's&J and the store owner comes into town just to openv' store. On a 70t purchase of white gas for the star- - (Special thanks to Frank Erickson, Don Gale, and Mike Cassldy) The city is the best of places. And the city is the worst of places. It is gleaming steel and glass skyscrapers sky-scrapers and crumbling redbrick tenements. The city has superhiways and paralyzing traffic jams. It has a surplus of goods and a scarcity of air. It has neon signs, billboards, and beautification campaigns. The city has infinite crowds of shoppers and uncounted lonely souls. It is a good place to live and a good place to get away from. It is the epitome of America. Is there a revolution going on in the city? Will things change? Don't know. Can't tell. All of us live too much in today too much in the immediacy of the city. Got to look back at yesterday and think about tomorrow. Got to step back and size it up. Got to get away from it all. Get out of the city and into the wilderness. Drive a VW or a 1949 Ford truck. Pedal a bicycle or hitch-hike. Just get there before it's gone. Where is "there"? Do you have to be told? You should feel it in your feet, your head, and your soul. You should feel it on one of those sunny summerish days of January, when the seagulls dip and soar overhead over-head against sparkling white mountains. The sun lives past its setting, as shades of pink and orange are caught in clouds and copper reflections glow on the water. It happens to a few odd people at the same time. Some people call them "wilderness freaks." They keep tabs on the frontier and consider the few untouched places their private domain. Wind River Mountains, Point Reyes, and Escalante have special connotations for them. They search to find their sleeping bags, and finding them, shake the sand out. For some reason they polish their boots. They stop in the gas stations and swipe maps, and they stock up on freeze-df ied foods. Why? Why? "Because we're going to Escalante." "Where's that?" "Down in southern Utah." "Well, what's it near?" "Nothing." "Then why are you going?" go-ing?" Don't try to explain; get on your wheels and drive. Take halizone tablets, and instant soup, and powdered milk, and jello. Get on the hiway and drive bumper to bumper till Provo. Go through Payson, Nephi, and . - . ... ' J, t-zw "- ' -'"' ' t ! '1.' -1? ' ' t : C - ' T': j C'y r, : .... . . , - v .. ' .... ') - .. , A -' I i i, ," -A W: 'i ) - : ' , t ' j ". . .' ' V-.-. S . - 1 ! ets.on.purpose to charge tax. Small towns are good and bad at the same time. They used to be grass roots merica, but the city stole that title and most of the .ices too. But how can a man have roots in a city? Something in him cries to walk on the land, to sleep nder a star-flecked sky. Escalante is the last outpost of civilization, and the U last paved road' Just OUt f town turn off onto a ' r(Bd that wrinkles and rolls with the land, and Is as rtjugh as a washboard sometimes. A long plume of dust follows as you drive in a slanting line towards the !aiparowitts cliffs. Though they are 1000 feet high and ,n straight as an arrow for 70 miles, the cliffs' seem I- ke the low wall on one side of a giant flat garden, i S Race down a hill, dive into Harris Wash, and emerge mth opaque windshield and wet arms. Turn on the f wipers. Twenty Mile Wash is coming up. "But the sign says 25 Mile Wash." "But according to the topographical map, It's 20 Mile Wash!" "But it can't be!" "It has to be. Look, here is the first wash, the corral, and the water hole we passed." jj,, "Well, let's pull over and have a look." mawwiii 11,1.1.11,.! nu.ii?fsKv-T-. r I jf'i",v1, - '1 i I . . I r- - . 1 . . ; A ! 'K - ' - . ... 1 , .'.. - . I - ' '' ' ' ' ' V;V' ' ., .-i- - . .,' ' , - VStf" ;- T -.. The wilderness spreads out on all sides, and for as far as you can see there is nothing but jutting and jagged red rock, and water-worn red canyons. There Is no dirt and little sand; just rock. There is an occasional cotton-wood cotton-wood tucked in a corner, but mesquite, sage, and cactus prevail. The silence is unheard of. Absolute quiet. At night, rid of the peripheral glare of the city, the stars shine bright, even gleam. With their unmeasured distance and unfathomed secrets, they dwarf the Immense Im-mense cliffs you sleep beneath. What is a star? How far away? Flickering fingers of fire dance in dying embers of wood, and then are lost. There is nothing comparable to getting up on a wilderness wilder-ness morning. Having been inert for 9 hours, you rise enveloped in crystalline air. Brrrrr! Light a fire, jump up and down, get blood moving. Fix some coffee. Then some freeze-dried scrambled eggs. Look at a map. Where shall we go today? Been moving into the wilderness for four days, guess it's time to start moving out. Time to retrace dusty footsteps, across the sage, over sand bars, through the water. What was a wilderness seems like your back yard now; you know It well. But now you have to go back to the city, that place of auto congestion, human confusion, and political dichotomy. dichoto-my. People seem to be at war with the land in cities; they can't live in harmony with it. At least you Will have in a hidden corner of your mind a memory of wildness, a vision of how it looked before man got there. And man will get there soon. They want to build a super-hiway through the middle of the Escalante wilderness, and make it into a "tourist attraction." They want to build hiways everywhere. The wheel opened up the wilderness and will preside at its funeral. We'll carpet the country with cement. So if you want to see it, better start now. Drive your VW or your 1949 Ford truck, pedal a bicycle or hitchhike. hitch-hike. Just get there before it's gone. sis " . j , t . ' ' : V I f 1 "i, f ,, "W-' i ' - s ; ' - : r t - n )' ' - ' I" - 1 .A l ' 'i I ' 's 1 H! ' f - -f fi I ; o , - , , . i J ; H r "" ' . . ! . 1 Tin rarr m i mi i' Mill i a mmwW mmtm VVUMOM So you start off not exactly sure where you are, which is a good way to begin. Start walking down the wash, and it dries up as soon as you get out of sight of the car. Walk. And walk and walk. Camp at the bottom of a large dirt hill in front of a big boulder. It makes a nice fireplace. Ever been cold at night? So cold that you thought about sleeping in the fire? And then gotten up in the cold morning, put on boots like blocks of ice, and gone to look for wood? But once the sun gets up in the sky, things warm up. And by 10 o'clock, things are real warm. "How far do you think we've come?" "Ten or twelve miles." "Well, the Escalante River should be just ahead." "Yeah." Thirteen miles later you come to the river, which is eight inches deep and six feet wide. "I thought you said it was a river?" "Well " On down to Scorpion Gulch. Jeez, what a name! Maybe Butch Cassidy stayed here! Is this it? According to the map, it should be the second canyon on the right. "But we've already passed three washes on the left?" They're not on the map? "That would put us in Arizona." Fine "Let's camp here and screw the map!" Scorpion Gulch is a fine place. In the middle of a jumbled redrock wilderness, it is a tight little canyon packed with cottonwoods and grass. Plenty of wood and deep clear stream running right down the middle. Walls of sandstone 600 feet high on either side, and they burn in flames of orange and red when the sun sets. It looks like the inside of a furnace. Did you ever sleep on a sand bar during a windy night? When the air falls off the plateaus into the canyons can-yons and comes whistling down, it sounds like a bowling ball rolling down the alley before it hits the pins. A distant moan, and you wait. One, two, three ... ten seconds sec-onds later it hits, whipping the cottonwoods and making your sleeping bag flutter in the cool air. And you wake up with sand in your hair, ears, mouth, and food. But it's all right Escalante canyon country is one of the most desolate and least inhabited areas in the United States. The Escalante river system was the last major river system discovered in the U.S. That was in 18, by John Wesley Powell. f ..- A - - L i'- - |