I awoke with such ease after the night we endured, and removing the condensation from my truck shells window I was delighted to not see rain flurry and lightening. In an effort to avoid the increasing temperatures in Joe’s Valley we left the day prior under a brilliant clear sky and headed straight for the mountains. Our approach to the mountains was quite uneventful as the weather was hot and stale and all of the dirt back-roads here in Utah seemed to be repaired and graded more than anywhere I have ever visited. However, as we summited we were greeted by the most torrential rainstorm I have ever experienced making us lose our way multiple times within a few miles of our destination. But now, as I stare out the windows at an incredibly different landscape from whence we had come; we were safe and I was comforted that we would have a week of solace in the trees.
Before bright light adorns the landscape there is a blue hue to all that was consumed by the prior evening’s darkness, a veil that is only lifted by the rising of the sun. Though this moment is brief it is of great importance to me as this rare shade of blue exhibits the calm energy of a forest about to wake, and though I don’t get to see it often, it is my favorite time of day.
At 10,000 feet the sun takes its time to rise and the bordering forest of huge conifers allow the first rays of light to penetrate only small patches of forest leaving most in the blue-hued darkness of early morning. And in this rare observation of nature one cannot help but draw parallel to walking along a very old, dimly lit hallway of some small European gallery and seeing Rembrandts work for the first time; which brings such contrast of light in the objective foreground while darkness dominates the backdrop.
The view allowed revelry in the sheer artistic brilliance of the mountains, which in my opinion is beyond comparison.
The passing clouds of mid-day brought definition of the highest caliber in a conjunction of shade and light in which shadows danced unrestricted on the forest floor. High winds blew with such persistence over the cloudscape that if one stared upon a desired location for more than a few moments would feel transfixed as if in a slighted hallucination from the condensed water vapors ever-changing distortion of shadow and anti-shadow on the forest floor.
Wearily I rested, feeling the nagging persistence of an unmoved body, which up until this point was out of bed by 7am and did not care to return until well after nightfall. My coveted interest, to surmount any challenge to its utmost physical degree, had been squandered by a deep nagging feeling in the left wrist and an overwhelming sense of exhaustion throughout. In an uncollected haze I slept and woke, and in this loose state I spent most of our first day in high-elevation as if in a lucid dream.
It is so unusual for me to rest as thus and by the late afternoon I couldn’t help but think that I was doing something that was “inefficient” and therefore wrong. This is the constant struggle I encounter on rest days and days of bad weather. I argue with myself that weakness is the only byproduct of the sedentary and force myself out of my cocoon and venture to the boulders, that as of yet I had not seen, but know are just on the other side of the surrounding conifers.
The stone here is very dissimilar to that of Joe’s Valley. In Joe’s the sandstone boulders are usually formed in a somewhat oblong or rectangular prism shape with very high contrast of color in their elegant yet stark streaks of black oxidized Iron, white, blue and orange calcite, brown and tan sandstone. The grips are of a resolute structure in their uniform edges, small acute pockets, rain-carved tufas and slashes of all directions and lengths. Because of the great expanse of Joe’s Valley boulders and of their building bloc (and sometimes building size) shape,
it is a world class destination leaving canyons such as this far off the beaten path for the modern boulder and are therefore pristine and secluded.
The architecture of the large granite stones here are more subtle in their features, which are mostly slopers, large edges and slopey jugs.
Their contour lines are of freshly unearthed gemstones still exhibiting their rigid non-symmetrical earthly purity before being altered by human hands, having been sculpted by millennia of strong weather: deep snow, crushing rainfall, high winds and penetrating sunshine. The boulders ability to change color between shade, cloud and intensity of sunlight leads one to wonder whether their base layer is ultimately orange or pink, as covering almost every square inch of them is a green lichen, and a shade of green unseen by mine eyes until the observation of the metamorphosing cicada of June in Joe’s Valley.
These massive gems that sit rightly amongst a field of almost endless blue and grey talus defined their starkness even further. And as I explored further up the first gulley I saw the expanse of the massive cliff band from which these boulders were born.
Alone I gazed and thanked Mother Nature for her captivating architecture in not leaving a single detail of beauty unsung, and in one crisp exhale I let my indignation and trepidation which hung for a moment in the oncoming nights cool air but quickly dissolved into the late afternoon breeze. At once I was contented and felt the need to have a taste of the stone.
