Day 12, Part 1: Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006
Escalante, Utah to Moab, Utah

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I came to Escalante because there is not only a red spot on my road atlas map marked "Escalante Canyons", but because the author Edward Abbey, in his book Desert Solitaire, once suggested that the Escalante River was the "Locus Dei", or the place where you might be able to find God on Earth. Since Abbey was an atheist, I feel like that's a pretty stirring recommendation.

The only problem is that I'm not sure what I ought to do, now that I'm here. I spend Tuesday night poring through my guide books in an effort to figure out where to go hiking, and it's not until I pick up my Rough Guide: USA (the same one I bought back in 1997) that I am inspired to go to a place called Calf Creek Canyon. Apparently, you can hike through the canyon for a few miles until you reach a 150 foot waterfall at its boxed-up end. I figure I'll have plenty of time to do that in the morning before driving through Capitol Reef National Park, possibly visiting Goblin Valley State Park, and then making it to Dead Horse Point, near Moab, in time for the sunset at the end of the day.


I have to drive east from Escalante on Utah Highway 12 to get to all of these places that I want to see. The road cuts through some pretty interesting territory.

I reach Calf Creek Canyon in mid-morning, and start my hike in the company of a handful of like-minded souls.

The walls of the canyon are made of what is called "Navajo Sandstone". The water that has dripped over the edges of the canyon--maybe once a year, for the past few million years or so--has left behind dramatic, dark-colored stains.

At the bottom of one stone wall are "pictographs"--or paintings--left by the Fremont Indians, over 700 years ago. I decide to break trail and cross the canyon to get a closer look.

There's no trail across Calf Creek, so I have to take off my shoes and socks and wade across its chilly waters to get to the other side. There's a makeshift trail over there which is unsullied by footprints; it's been awhile since anybody else has forded the river.

I have to scramble up a few rocks to get the perspective on the pictographs that I'm looking for. They're actually perched so precariously at the bottom of the canyon wall that I don't even try to get close enough to touch them. I just stare at them for awhile from underneath the shade of a tree. I couldn't tell from across the canyon that there is a small, many-tentacled creature below and to the right of the three main, trapezoidal human figures. There is also an unadorned trapezoid to the left of the three compatriots, hiding amidst the smears of red on the wall. And--weirdly--there is a fourth human figure directly in front of the larger human figure on the right.

It occurs to me, as I'm sitting there, noticing all of these things, that these pictographs are a work of art that is not a thing-unto-itself, but rather, an inextricable part of this place.


I can hear the trickling of water in a grove of cottonwood trees next to the pictograph panel, so I head over there to investigate, once I've had my fill of the pictographs. It turns out that the water is trickling all the way down the stone wall in a dark black stain, eventually pooling out in a remarkable garden of hanging moss and ferns at the bottom of the canyon.

While I'm over in this garden, resting in the shade of the trees, I hear human voices back over by the pictographs. I listen for them twice to make sure that I'm not just being fooled by the sound of the trickling water. Once I'm done taking pictures of the cottonwoods, I go back across the creek to the trail on the other side of the canyon, but I can't see anybody by the pictographs. And there are no other footprints besides mine on the trail that leads away from the water.

As I start heading back up towards the waterfall, I wonder what, exactly, I heard. Echoes from the other side of the canyon? The ripples from the trickling water? Or the ghosts of the Fremont Indians, disturbed by my presence at the pictographs?


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