Journeys: Canyonlands National Park - Needles District, Utah - Camping and Hiking

Monday, October 25, 2010

Canyonlands National Park - Needles District, Utah - Camping and Hiking

Before this world existed, the holy people made themselves visible by becoming clouds, sun, moon, trees, bodies of water, thunder rain, snow, and other aspects of this world we live in. That way, they said, we would never be alone. So it is possible to talk to them and pray, no matter where we are and how we feel. Biyázhí daniidlí, we are their little ones...

--- Luci Tapahonso
Sháá Áko Dahjiníleh
Remember the Things They Told Us

Canyonlands - Needles District

A trip to the Needles of Canyonlands National Park with a new friend proved to be as much of as adventure as it was a learning experience for me. I enjoyed our frank discussions about religion (his strong belief in and my lack of) as much as I enjoyed the scenery of one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Until this trip, I hadn't spent time in a place that is so important to me with someone who needs the desert in the same way that I do. It's not just a playground for me to explore. Some people go to church. I go to the canyons. A rare few do both.

Squaw Canyon

Big Spring Canyon

Pothole Point

The Needles

On Sunday, we went to the Church of the Great Outdoors together on our way through Indian Creek - a reminder that spirituality and religion can be related, but aren't exclusive to each other. I like to think that they are different ways of looking at the same thing. Beautiful scenery and beautiful company made this one of the best trips ever.

Indian Creek

Beautiful

Ditto

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess