I’m an American woman in mid-life, who for
most part has bought into prevailing model where busy is good. Outside of an hour’s walk through woods and a few weeks’ car camping when my daughter was young, I’m a city girl whose idea of roughing it is a room in Motel 6. “Vision Quest,” brochure read. “Do it while you still can.” Seemed like a good idea when I filled out form back there sitting at my desk. But now, I wasn’t so sure -- not sure at all in fact, as I set down what looked like a very tiny amount of gear on a ledge overlooking Hell Roaring Canyon in Utah desert.
So what was I doing, preparing to fast for seventy-two hours on rim of Utah’s Hell Roaring Canyon? That’s a long time when all you have to do is find shelter, drink water, and come to terms with being alone.
My first challenge was setting up camp. After a dozen tries and an exercise in creative vocalization, I succeeded in anchoring my tarp to a few rocks and one cliff-hanging tree. I secreted my precious water in a crevasse to protect it from sun. I memorized edges of ledge I’d chosen as home. With 72 hours ahead, I had no need to hurry, but before long, altitude and heat cut my pace down, made me question at every move I would have undertaken easily day before. Drink water, I kept reminding myself, repeating survival mantra of desert: pee often, pee clear.
After dark, temperature dropped . . . and dropped. I could hear nocturnal creatures doing creaturely things, and we weren’t permitted a fire. The novelty of watching my frosty breath kept me entertained for maybe a minute, but it was ice crystals in my drinking water that made me take seriously fact that I was under-dressed and night was getting COLD. Abandoning any pious intentions of keeping vigil, I pulled my sleeping bag over my ears. The moon was full, but there was nothing friendly about its light, as it froze my eyes for hours before I gave up and slept. Dear God, let me survive this night, was all I could pray.
By mid-morning of Day Two, sunshine and curiosity nudged me into exploring wash. An occasional bandana signaled a colleague’s camp. A raven flew past, cracking silence with flapping of its wings. Gradually, I realized that, yes, I was isolated, but I was not alone.
I am in a place of constant movement . . .[I wrote in my journal], some episodic, as when huge boulders break loose and tumble down gorge or when canyon hosts raging floods from which it got its name. Some of movements are very slow, as in work of roots and water that pry loose those hunks of granite and of shale. Slow as in one-inch-per-century growth of cryptogam, or trees that take a decade even to inch above soil.
