Zion, Alone in the Crowd
Chilly, chilly, CHILLY night. I slept with the snow pants on and after many shivers in the dark, I finally pulled the winter jacket over me like it were another blanket. Then I was well enough off. In the morning I bought a ticket to the park by registering for some recreational account, but the earliest ticket I could get was for noon so I ended up hiking the Watchmen Trail. Right at the start I got some great shots of a pack of fearless deer that browsed just a few feet away, some of them almost within arm's reach. As the elevation increased I started to sweat on the hike up like on any good Colorado trail, and when I reached the top I confronted the greatness of this place. I had glimpsed hints of the earth’s restlessness - massive rock fronts gave way to shear verticals, and now at the top I fully understood the geologic chaos that had happened here. It was a primordial landscape, prehistoric yet telling of a story in the sudden drops where you could walk a path with your eyes closed, and not know if the ground below your next step were mere inches, or thousands of feet below.
I hopped on the shuttle just past noon and got a good seat at the front of the trailer (one motorized shuttle pulled an unmotorized one behind it). I got off at the next stop and hiked up to the Emerald Pools. As the day wore on I realized I was the odd man out: an introvert among extroverts. Everyone is here with their families or friends and throughout the whole day I only saw a handful of loners, of heroes, among thousands. I love that I got to experience this place though. Zion is really just a canyon that ends in the narrows, and at the end of the day you just come back out the way you came with the shuttle.
The whole day I didn’t see a single other soul with sandals on, despite the thousands and thousands. I thought I saw a budding tree from the shuttle and made me think that maybe I had drove through winter to spring. After leaving the park I cruised around the towns of La Verkin and Hurricane and picked up some Taco Bell before heading out to an overlook above the neighboring towns and parking for the night on a dirt road. I took 237 pictures today. Holy fuck, I knew it was a lot but I didn't think it was that many. Zion had tested and then obliterated the shutter discipline I thought I had achieved.
