US 191, South of Blanding.
I turn onto a dirt road and drive to the east about a half a mile. For two reasons. I need to take a piss, and I need to see this moon.
The moon is eclipsing, half way to full, an orange shadow side and a white sun side. I thought it might be happening tonight but I wasn't sure.
I get back on the road and stop at a convenience store on the Ute reservation to get a cup of hot fake cappuccino, some crackers, and a pack of M&Ms. I've got a little food in the truck, but it's always good to have more snacks on the road. After I fill up with gas using my Shell credit card at the pump, I head for the store. Inside, as I get my crackers and such, I see the cashier talking with a young teenage girl. Both appear to be Utes.
"You gonna get in trouble with that boy," says the older woman.
"No, I won't," says the teenager seemingly exasperated, "He's OK."
"Yea, well, we'll see."
I walk up and place my crackers, M&Ms and coffee on the counter. The young girl moves toward the front door.
"Bye-bye, Gloria."
"You know what I said about that boy."
"I know, I know," the teen says, rolling her eyes as she leaves.
"Will that be all?" Gloria says to me.
"Yep, that'll be it" I say.
"By the way, the full moon is eclipsing right now," I say, pointing out the pane glass window of the store to the moon rising in the Eastern sky.
"They say it's bad luck to look at that kind of moon," says Gloria.
"Really?"
"Yea, bad luck. That'll be $4.27."
I give her a five. She gives me back the change.
"Thank you, ma'am."
"You're welcome."
I walk back to the Pathfinder, and stow the snacks and grab my Windex bottle and a paper towel, and proceed to clean off the bugs on my windshield. I'm a little tired. I've been on the road for about ten hours now. Heading north toward the Abajos. Long haul from Tucson, but the moon is full and I've got four days off from the day job, because of Veterans Day. And I got a couple of hoops in the back, one, brand new that needs test driving. Just passed Bluff about an hour ago. Got another hour or two ahead of me. No clouds, and the full moon will return soon enough. I hop back in the truck and head north on 191.
At Monticello, I take a left at one of the two stoplights, and head up into the Abajo Mountains, a relatively unexplored area of Southeastern Utah. With Arches National Park to the north, Canyonlands National Park to the west, and Monument Valley to the south, the Abajos are just a mid-sized range of blue mountains to the west that tourists barely notice. The residents of Monticello hunt and camp some, up in the Abajos, but Monticello is just a town of a couple thousand if that. It's November and cold, and a bit out of season. Very little traffic on the road. Might be hunting season but I doubt it. I'm at around 7,000 feet now, heading to about 8 or 9 I'm guessing.
I look off to the east again at the Moon. Almost full eclipse now. A smoky orange sphere. Hope it comes out soon, I think. I wind through the residential streets of Monticello for about five minutes and then I'm headed up the hill, toward the mountain. The road is great, paved, and smooth. The air is crisp and clear. I'm singing along to a Bruce Cockburn song. I know the words. This is about as good as it gets, I think.
With no moon it's hard to find the pull-off to the campsite that I visited a number of years ago. I pass it once and do a three-point turn on the empty mountain road. I haven't seen a car the entire twenty-minute ride up. I had so much energy just a half hour ago, and now all the air is out of my balloon. I pull into the small, primitive campsite just off the road and park the truck but leave it running. It's really cold now, even though it's only about 9 p.m. I look for the moon and find it, but it's still more than half in eclipse. Hardly any light to speak of. I already have my deep winter North Face jacket on. I slip on my boo-boo hat and get my sleeping bag out of the back. Truck still running. I move all the CDs, cameras and snacks out of the back seat to the way back area and unroll my sleeping bag. I'm dead tired. I figure I can shoot at 2 in the morning and after. The moon will be back and high in the sky then. Should get some Z's. I'm just dead now.
I take off my boots, leave my socks on, turn off the ignition, crack a window, lock the doors, take off my glasses and crawl into my fiberfill bag, clothes and all. Within minutes, I'm sound asleep.
Minutes later, I'm awakened by the full Moon in my eyes. I crawl forward, still in my bag, to check the dash clock. It's 1:30 a.m. I've slept for four and a half hours straight, but if feels like I just closed my eyes. I lay back down, trying to go to sleep but my mind goes to the hoops in the back and the old Aspens that are surrounding me. How will the hoops look, dancing through this old growth forest? Is the moon too high? Boy, it's cold. I don't think I've ever hoop danced in weather this cold. I'm awake now. Let's have at it.
I put on my boots, my glasses and my coat and open the door to the outside. The wind is mild but it's still cutting through me. Man, it's cold here. I'm shivering now. I jump back in the truck and start it up. Unfortunately, the truck's heater takes forever to heat up if it's just idling. Better if it's rolling. I light a Camel and consider my options. I place the smoke in the tray and go outside again. I look up at the trees and the moon. Not bad, but I have a bad feeling about this place for some reason. Not like something's going to happen. More like something bad has happened here in the past. Could be just an argument between lovers, could be worse. I just know that I don't want to shoot here. Time to go, but where? Hmmm. I saw a dirt road just down the mountain a mile or so. Let's try that. I hop back in the truck and make my way out of the campsite and back onto the two-lane blacktop.
I hardly need headlights with the bright full moon, just passed directly overhead. The moon is making its way to the west and I have a good four hours of moonlight to work with. This is great. I find the jeep trail with ease, and turn onto it. I put the truck in four wheel drive and gently climb up the track.
Aspens, large and small, are all around me. I could shoot right here, feet from the pavement, it's just that beautiful, but I continue my climb up the mountain. The road is worn but easy. What a beautiful place. A small campsite is off to the left. I think I'll go a little farther up. After less than a mile, I find another primitive pull-off and take it, backing into it, facing out. I cut the lights but leave the truck running and step outside. The feel is magical. I bundle up, boo-boo hat, scarf, gloves and the North Face, shut off the truck, lock it and head up the jeep trail. I laugh at myself for locking the truck.
The two track is a bit steep but not bad. All around me are large stands of Aspens mixed with just as large of stands of Blue Spruce pine trees. Like walking through a forest of ancient Christmas trees. Initials of lovers in hearts are carved in the bark of some of the Aspens close to the road. Teenagers from Monticello, I reckon. Some fast moving clouds have mixed into the mostly clear sky. The moon is as bright as a giant streetlight, winking off and on with racing clouds.
I leave the jeep trail and head toward a large stand of Aspens a hundred yards south. This stand rises up a steep hill. These aren't the ancient Aspens that are six feet across but they are old ones, some three feet in width. Before I climb much, I can see that this is the place. I turn and go back to the truck and get my camera gear. It's an easy bushwhack from the truck to this Aspen hill. Not too difficult at all. I climb back up this hill and after very little time, find a handsome group of Aspens to hoop dance through. Tripod and camera go up in a flash. Batteries good to go on the hula hoop. Lights bright and steady. Focus 2/3 back and ready to go. A very fast set up.
I light the hoop way out of the frame, and walk back to the Rollei. I open the shutter. I grab the hoop and swing it even and smooth high above my head, watching my feet so as not to trip on the fallen logs on the forest floor. I make four passes of the hoop and then lean it against a tree 30 feet out of frame. I look up at the moon and think '15 minutes should do it.' I walk down the hill to the truck and light up a Camel. I finish my smoke and walk up the jeep trail that goes to the top of the Abajos, both to pass the time of the open shutter and to also take in the forest itself. I climb far up the trail. The thick Spruce portions of the forest are a little scary, closed in and tight compared to the open Aspen areas.
After a while, I turn around. It's been about fifteen, twenty minutes I think. As I descend the trail, off to my right, a couple hundred yards away, through the Spruce and Aspen, I see a light in the forest. My hair stands on end, wondering what is that? I stop up quick on the jeep trail, looking hard into the forest. Then I smile and realize the light I see is my own hula hoop of lights, high on the hill, from far away. I just stand there and marvel at the magical lights that I've placed there in this forest. Shoot, this scared me, and I put it there. Can you imagine if you were a very early morning hunter from Monticello driving up this road to get to a good spot, come dawn, and you see these mysterious circle of lights, on the side of a hill in the full moon light? You'd tell your friends, who'd tell their friends and within five years, the Monticello Tourist Board would have a pamphlet printed talking about the ghost light of Blue Mountain, that only appear during the full moon of a lunar eclipse.
Close to the truth? Ah, who knows. I'm the one seeing it tonight. Maybe a deer will see it. Probably just me. But a camera can't capture what I'm seeing right now, an oval of light, in the middle of the night, in a forest of tall white trees.
I stand a bit longer and take it in, into the camera of my own eyes.
Dawn at The Needles Overflow Campground.
Well, campground is too fancy of a word. It's just an area of slick rock land, outside of the Canyonlands National Park's Needles District, where there are places here and there you can park a car, put up a tent in the rock and sand, and crash for the night.
I can unpack the Svea stove and cook some oatmeal and make some coffee, but I'll settle on some water on my face, a Harvest bar, and a Tab.
Yesterday, after a little morning nap, after shooting throughout the night in the Abajos, I drove to the Needles District and hiked most of the day. Good hiking, but only so-so pictures I think. I was mostly here for the hiking. Last night, I just drove up here and collapsed, after hiking up and down the red and white slickrock. Figure I hiked about 15 miles yesterday, and I'm feeling it this morning. Soda and a smoke and I'll be good to go. Add to that the knowledge, that there is a remote trading post just five miles down the road where I can get a hot cup of coffee. I'll get there in a bit.
I climb to the top of some slick rock just behind my parked truck, with my Tab soda in my hand and sit on a rock. Lighting up a smoke, I remember the first time I came here in the mid '90s and how blown away I was, by the air, the rock, the end-of-the-road feel to the place. (The Needles are, after all, at the end of a 35 mile long dead end road.) It was also near the time I was starting to try long-time exposures on full moon nights. I didn't know what I was doing. I was using much too slow of film (Kodachrome 100) and not nearly long enough exposures, but I was trying. The 35-mm Pentax wasn't great but it was all I had. This was before Sterling had sold me his old Rollei Medium Format Camera for a song. But it was a good time. Learning some. Making a lot of mistakes that looked like mistakes. (Nowadays, I'm lucky. A good number of my mistakes looks like I planned it that way.) Breathing in the Colorado Plateau.
It's mostly overcast this morning. I wonder if it'll rain. Maybe snow at higher altitude. Then again, even though it doesn't look it, I'm at pretty high altitude right now on this high, flat, slick rock plateau.
I go for a quick stroll down the sandy dirt road, a couple of hundred yards and then bushwhack back to the truck, finding a rock along the way that kind of looks like a chicken sitting on a nest. I finish another soda and decide it's time to hit the trading post for a hot cup of Joe. It's getting close to 8 a.m.
Slowly, I make my way back to the pavement. It's not very far, passing the place I camped the first time I came here. On the blacktop and take a right, it's just a mile to the trading post. This isn't your fancy Navajo trading post which sells more jewelry than food these days. This is a throwback to the days when Indians rode many miles on horseback to get flour, oil, yarn and fuel, at the only place to buy anything for miles around. This outpost doesn't cater to Native folk now but rather the hikers, backpackers and tourists that take the long dead end road to The Needles. You can buy a shower just as easy as you can buy a Balance bar. Within minutes, I'm parking my Pathfinder in the sand parking lot. This building is just an add-on, onto add-ons, a patchwork quilt of building materials from over the years. A single plane airstrip is off to the east. The main road a half a mile away. Takes a special breed to stay and work out here. I wonder who's here this year. It was an old couple back in the '90s.
I enter through a wooden screen door and notice a very attractive woman sitting on a stool. Her eyes brighten up like she's known me for years.
"Well, how are you this fine morning," she says.
"Real well, thanks."
"What can I get you for?" she asks.
She has long wavy brown hair. Beautiful thin lips smiling over crooked teeth. Not bad teeth. Just crooked. She's slim and tan in her face and on her thin arms. Looks to be in her thirties or early forties.
"Just need some coffee." I see it over by the window that looks out onto The Needles.
"Right over there," points to where I'm walking.
"They say it's going to rain today, maybe even snow down to 5000 feet," she adds.
She's still smiling at me. Maybe it's me, but I think she flirting with me. Which is fine with me. Annie and I aren't a couple anymore, friends but not lovers, and Andrea is just a weird memory now.
As I pour my coffee, I notice a man down a short hallway leading to a back room, looking at me with only mild interest. He doesn't smile nor frown. Just goes back to work on a piece of metal in his hands. Too far away to tell what it is. Probably something that runs something that's broke. He walks down the hall away from me and out of view. I bet he's her husband or boyfriend.
"You going in The Needles?" she looks me dead in my eyes. Still smiling but now it seems less like flirting and just desperate for company. Any company.
"No, I went in yesterday. I heading south today," I say.
"Oh, okay," she says. She seems very nice and very lonely.
I grab some Harvest bars, and eye the orange juice. No, just bars and a big coffee with cream, I think. I place the bars and coffee on the counter and reach for my wallet.
"Yes, they say might snow down to 5000 feet today and tonight," she says again.
"You gotten any snow yet this year?" I ask. She seems thrilled that I asked her a question.
"Just a little powdering a couple weeks ago. Nothing much. Should be snow here tonight."
"Well, stay warm," I add as I hand her some money for the coffee.
"Oh, I'll try. I'll try." If she isn't flirting with me, I'm a dead man. It as if she's saying 'Please, just take me away from here. Come back and talk with me. He never talks with me anymore. I'm stuck here. Please talk to me. Hold me. Please.' I don't think I'm imagining this, but I might be.
I sadly smile back at her. In my face is "Sorry, honey."
Her weak smile to me says, "I know, I understand."
"Take care now," I say.
"You, too," she says.
I turn away and push the screen door open with my foot, and catch it with my foot on the outside, so it doesn't slam. It's the least I can do.
Somewhere around Newspaper Rock, a huge rock covered with dozens of petroglyphs, right on State Road 211, it starts to rain. Not hard but steady, and judging from the thick overcast, it's going to rain for a while. The smells are thick, of wet sage, of moist live oaks, of the ground itself. After 20-plus years in the desert, I worship any and all rain. This is a gentle rain. A female rain, the Navajos call it. I can hear the shooshing sound as my tires roll over the wet pavement. I climb out of the small canyon that protects Newspaper Rock, and I'm back up at the flats. And off to the south, I see the Abajo Mountains, but only the bottom is showing. This rest is in cloud. It's cold but not freezing here, but I bet you dimes to a donuts it's snowing up there. Time to beat feet.
In no time, I'm heading south on US 191, and in less than an hour, I'm in Monticello. I take a right on the residential street I took just a couple of nights ago. Then, clear and dark. Now, wet and raining but no snow. Not yet.
Less than a minute after I leave the Monticello town limits, the rain changes to snow. Heavy snow. I stop the truck and engage the four-by-four. Thank you, God, for four-wheel drive. Back in the day, with the two-by-four pickup I used to own, this would have been quite the adventure, going uphill on blacktop with snow that's quickly sticking to an already cold road. I still remember that night in 1990, outside of Boulder, driving up to Meghan's parents house and almost sliding down into a ravine. Not today. With fat tires and the four-by-four, I'm in pretty good shape. But not too cocky. I also remember that day just a couple of years ago, in this Pathfinder, where myself and about a dozen other folk with knobby tires and four-wheel drive got stuck back in the deep woods north of Flagstaff and had to be escorted out by a fleet of snowmobilers. But right now, It's just beginning to stick and I think I can at least get close to where I want to go.
The snow is falling so think now, I turn on my headlights, at 10 o'clock in the morning. The flakes make trails before my eyes, like the Millennium Falcon going into hyperdrive. It may have to do with all the drugs I used to do, that I see trails so easily. Doesn't bother me. Rather like it actually.
Peter Gabriel's "More Than This" has been playing on the CD player since Monticello, but I turn it down and then completely off. I need to concentrate. It is getting slick now. The miles click by, higher and higher I go, thicker and thicker snow. It's like a blizzard without the wind. About two inches on the road right now. There. There's the jeep trail from two nights ago. Hmmm. Do I want to chance it, driving up there? Walking will be just as good and probably more fun. I five-point turn the truck around and go back a half mile or so to a paved parking lot for hikers. Still snowing like crazy. I park pointing out and down hill, just in case, and suit up. Boo-boo hat, of course. Pamela's scarf and my Dad's old gloves. North Face and only one camera this time. I lugged the 35-mm all over The Needles yesterday and it was mostly just a dead weight. A lot of special places seen and felt but probably no shots of note from the Canyonlands. But today, I grab just the little 127 Brownie Camera, checking the little bag it's in, for extra rolls. Plenty. I've got the Camelback full of water. Mostly I don't need the water, but I'll take it anyway. You never know. I may sprain an ankle. I pack the Brownie into the Camelback and step outside.
It's cold but delightful. Wet but good. I pull the boo-boo hat down low on my head, shoulder the Camelback, lock the truck and go. Got smokes. Good. Good to go.
About three inches on the road now. Growing up in the South, when it snowed, it rarely stuck, for the ground was usually not that cold, but here, this ground has been cold for a month. Like throwing shaved ice in a freezer. It ain't melting. Big difference, from here and Down South, is this is powder. We don't have powder east of the Mississippi.
I walk up the pavement toward the jeep trail. The cold air is bright and wonderful on my face. My lung breath in freely the frigid air. It does help that my North Face jacket that I bought for the Salt Lake Olympics is toasty and warm. I'm wearing Levis but that's ok. The wool socks inside my hiking boots conpensate for my cold legs. I'll be fine for at least three hours before I get real wet. We do have some snow near Tucson, on Mt. Lemmon. I ain't no bayou boy.
No tire tracks at all on the road. I walk right up the center line, just because I can. Then off to the right, near the shoulder, I see recent tracks in the snow. What are they? I bend over and examine them. Bird. Big bird tracks. Only one big bird that I can think off that would be here. Just as I'm about to say the word, movement catches my eyes in the low trees just off the road. A half dozen wild turkeys are slow walking through the forest there. Not scared of me. May not be aware of me at all. I think at that moment in history, of Benjamin Franklin who wanted to make the national bird the wild turkey, not the bald eagle. He was voted down. Today I would have voted with him. These are big, strong, impressive birds. Within a minute, they're gone, swallowed up by the forest and the snow.
I continue walking up the road. Not far now to the jeep trail. Up ahead, I see headlights and then an old Ford Econoline van slowly drives by. I wave in acknowledgment as he goes by. The driver head-nods me. Good thing he's going downhill, I think, checking his skinny tires as he goes by. First car I've seen in close to an hour.
I almost walk by the jeep trail from two nights hence. The land is so different now. I walk up the dirt track that is now a snow track, getting deeper and deeper. But my woolies are doing their job, feet still toasty. I pass the place I parked my Pathfinder. I see the hill of Aspens that I danced through less than 36 hours ago. The forest is truly a wonderland now. I enter the place on the jeep trail where the large Blue Spruces hug the road, but this time it isn't scary, but comforting, like being held by the spirit of the trees. I grab a Blue Spruce branch gently and shake it like I'm shaking someone hand.
"Hello, Tree. How are you?" I say.
The Blue Spruce says nothing, but I don't feel it's unhappy, with me or anything else.
I release the branch and continue going higher up the jeep trail. Still snowing hard. Little wind. Thicker and thicker snow on the ground.
I walk and walk, stopping from time to time to catch a snowflake on my tongue, stopping to just look up at the Aspens ascending toward a vanishing point in the clouds, stopping and marveling at the numerous shades of the color White, stopping and listening to the silence of the snow.
And then a song comes to mind, a song I'd last sung in my truck almost a year ago while driving around Tucson.
"Sleigh bells ring, are you listening,
In the lane, snow is glistening.
A beautiful sight, We're happy tonight.
Walking in a Winter Wonderland."
I begin to do a soft shoe in the snow while I sing "Winter Wonderland." I ain't Fred Astaire but I don't care.
"Gone away is the bluebird,
Here to stay is a new bird
He sings a love song, as we go along,
Walking in a Winter Wonderland."
I'm making quite a mess in the road, kicking the powder high in the air. Looking like a fool perhaps, but who's here? It's me, me, me and the trees. And now we're at the bridge. I love the bridge of this song. I do a full 360 spin as I sing.
"In the meadow we can build a snowman,
Then pretend that he is Parson Brown,
He'll say, Are you married? We'll say, No man,
But you can do the job when you're in town."
And now the grand finale. I'm swinging my arms and my body like a whirling dervish. I'm stomping the snow like Gene Kelly splashing puddles in Singing in the Air. I'm singing loud enough to hear an echo in the forest.
"Later on, we'll conspire,
As we dream by the fire
To face unafraid, the plans that we've made
Walking in a Winter Wonderland."
I stop, throw my arms out, arch my back and tilt my head way back. Snowflakes fall around and then on my face. I close my eyes.
I'm in my own Broadway Musical.
"Stu in a Winter Wonderland."