The 2nd best TR

[A. Cairns]

The trip was on, in my mind, as soon as he said ‘desert towers’. Long
ago there was a kid’s book with a little cowboy who made himself a fire
in the evening and the smoke from it rose straight into the sky, up
among mysterious sheer shapes surrounding him. I could sense the giddy
feeling of being on top of one of those pillars. After a youthful
imprinting on desert terrain in Texas and Oklahoma, I had never climbed
in the Southwest, outside of JTree.

A few days on the road exposed my partner’s flaws. Mine, too. He was
fastidious, I was grubby. He was a light sleeper, I snored. Adding it up
over the trip, the total time he spent waiting for me: 30 minutes; the
time I spent waiting for him: 3 1/2 days. I liked everything I saw,
while for him the light was on the wrong side, the foreground wasn’t
lit, the composition was poor, etc. The light was on the wrong side of
Utah.

After a painful break-up he was lonely. I was male, married and not
photogenic.

One area where we came together was in trying to make Desert Rock work
for us. "Take the trail until under the prominent chimney." Ha, ha, good
one, Eric. It was a grudge match. We fought through the lack of detail.
One morning we surveyed the vista from Dead Horse Point, breakfasted in
Moab, asked about the weather ("Can’t say for sure"), and headed out the
scenic Potash road.

The tower eluded us and Eric seemed to be getting the upper hand, until
midday when it unmistakably came into view. My partner was worried that
there wasn’t time, that we didn’t have enough water, that the sun was
too strong. I hiked up to look, and the wind was fierce at the notch but
the air was cool.

The scene looking out and down was dominated by flat sandstone blocks,
some resting comfortably on solid ground, some perched on columns, and
others like roof tiles, atilt on slopes. Sandy washes meandered into the
cliffsides. There were a few juniper, occasional tufts of dry grass,
dirt both living and dead, and no people, cars, buildings, powerlines,
or dogs. Just beyond the road, the White Rim broke down toward the
Colorado.

Back at the car, my partner had been thinking troubled thoughts and
didn’t want to just wait where we were. We started south along the White
Rim again. The tower receded into the red background. I thought we were
going to return in the evening, but we didn’t. The plan became to follow
the road until it rejoined the highway, then circle back to the tower.
The plan evolved, first into getting the serious 4-wheeling done before
dark, then into praying that we wouldn’t meet another vehicle coming the
other way. There were sections where backing up would have been tricky.
Dangerous, even.

The last switchbacks up through the Wingate were a relief. There were
places for another car to get by if someone else came along. We felt the
road was less likely to cave. By that time, though, we had lost interest
in going straight back to the tower. I had suffered through hours of
frustration. My partner’s flaws were getting to me. He at least had had
his attention fully occupied with the here and now. I had had to fall
back on patience, my most effective strategy, but a sense of loss kept
eating away at it.

AMC