Our Canyon

For Rhea - Merry Christmas

There are times when I find myself with a deep sense of remorse and loss. It is often when the sun sets a more southerly course and the days become short and the night becomes long. Winter is typically cruel like that. In these moments, I’m reminded (or perhaps forced), to remember the moments spent in our favorite canyon. The laughs dance through the summer air thick as the brush around us. Our spirits fed on rising trout, warm dutch ovens, and the ancient remedy of flickering campfire flames. I take a sip of whiskey, and there we are. Plain as day. Alone in our canyon. The morning dew thick. The sun dancing on your olive skin. You are focused on reading.

At this time of year, the days are long, the air is dry, and through the trees, the frolicking dust is temporarily suspended by rays of sunlight through green pine branches. How they move in such romantic unison. Tip-tap, tip-tap, up and down. In moments like these, it is easy to peer through the prism of light and for a brief moment disappear into the wilderness. Perhaps the dust already knows this. We are amateurs in this wild place forged by millions of years of the contracting forces of water and ice where the cyclical nature of things transcends time. The dust knows this. Our souls know this - it is our place where we retreat to become one again, despite the slow march of time. Where the vile stains of the modern world erode and give way to our true selves. A place where we come back to each other. Tip-tap, tip-tap. Up and down. 

I adjust the canopy guy lines to account for the cooling night air as the sun retreats behind the western ridgeline. Taut. The shale cliff’s majesty slowly fades and gives way to shadows. To our east, the show is just beginning as we are treated to a dazzling display of reds, yellows, and pinks as the canvas of alpenglow blankets the walls. You say it’s time for dinner. I adjust the coals and catch you in a moment of unawareness from the corner of my eye. There is a smile on your face. I take a snapshot in my memory and prepare the dutchie. In a few weeks, this canyon will be empty. Any trace of us left behind as the ritual of seasons takes hold. Our own existence gets narrower and narrower. I step back and look to the walls. I wonder if the ice that filled this valley once felt the same. It’s eventual fate trickling into the flow of a small river I watch you pull trout from. “Seasons”, I say. 

We have lost much the past year. The seasons of life giving us gut punches we can never prepare for. A long Fall with much loss. Our shadows long. The trees bare for weeks now. The grasses dead. The trout difficult to get up. The squirrels and rodents long tucked away in anticipation of the ultimate death of another year of seasons. But then, sometimes, I stop. I look east and remember our canyon. Renewal sits on the horizon. 

Relationships are like seasons; sometimes they are warm and giving, others, in moments of hibernation until it is appropriate to return with full force. But the season of “us” is always alive in this canyon, whether we are together or not. If you listen closely, the laughter will appear from over a ridge. The smells from a campfire will appear and stop you in your boots. And the side-eye glace of a loved one is only a moment away. Somewhere in this canyon, the ghosts remain. Somewhere in this canyon, you and I will always exist.

***

It is early summer and a young man struggles with a staff pole. He is frustrated and weary after a long day of hiking. Dust covers his shins and sweat collects along the small of his back. But, he is steadfast and prideful to create suitable quarters. The canyon is beautiful and his girlfriend sits in her camping chair sipping a seltzer watching birds. Slllllurp. He tensions the guy lines but he has over tensioned. A line snaps. He is angry. He turns quickly, prepared to fire his anger toward to earth. He stops. A tendril of hair dances between blades of sunlight through the pine. He is awed at the beauty and struck by the simplicity. He smiles, looks at the western ridgeline as the sun slowly recedes. “Time to start the coals.”