And then there were two. Man and woman. Bathed. Naked. Refreshed. Tits flopping, bellies full of elk and cow, brains TV-addled. Clothes laundered and half-folded, tent gear hung and drying. Nails clipped, route confirmed.
A hundred miles to Grand Junction, a thousand miles from home.
After saying goodbye to our friend who’d flown out from San Francisco to join four days of the trail, we spent the night recharging at the Rodeway Inn in Glenwood Springs, near the western end of the Rocky Mountains. The next morning, we walked south through town and then west into the White River National Forest. We walked for eight hours mostly uphill, but how far? It was hard to tell. Amazingly, 4.5 months into the trip, this was our first extended time with a complete lack of cell service.
Earlier in the day, I had talked to some guy in a pickup who said our route would never lead back to another paved road. Discouraging, but soon after a young guy working for the Forest Service rolled up and — after initially confirming the bad news— plucked up his enthusiasm, leapt out of the truck, and opened a few maps. In fact, there was a way! He said that though the hardest path ahead would be bumpy, rocky, and muddy, it would at least be overwhelmingly downhill. He also warned us of two creeks we’d have to cross — one high, the other a little less high. But there was a way.
The next day, we reached the creeks. The first was wide and rushing (for two people on foot who would have to carry a dog stroller full of camping gear across) but contemplated crossing all the same. Just then, the gods sent two mountain men in four-wheelers, who offered to ferry us across, buggy and all. At the less high second creek, we crossed all on our own.
For four days, the lack of cell reception persisted, but we didn’t mind. We walked for 8–9 hours each day, but never knew exactly how many miles we’d completed. I couldn’t check the forecast but we had sunny, fair days. And I was never even sure of the names of the places where we camped. Four Mile Park? West Divide Cow Camp? Hightower? Didn’t really matter too much.
One night was pure peace. The blazing sun set behind the ridge, cooling everything down. The moon illuminated moment to moment, the skeeters came out for supper, the bees busily gathered a last-minute harvest, the lone deer on the hills nibbled away at the green, the birds sung their sundown songs. Everything was perfect, except my love was mad at me. We got over it.
I later learned that while we had been enjoying our tranquil walk in the woods, back home my mom was freaking out. She had grown far too accustomed to receiving check-in texts from me and so, after a couple days of silence, she panicked and ended up calling the forest rangers. They’re used to playing it cool with moms, thankfully, and didn’t send a search and rescue.
At the end of the fourth day, we reached Collbran, a small town of 700 in Mesa County. We walked into the first convenience store and asked the young blonde if we could fill our water bottle from the tap. In the back kitchen, her coworker, a middle-aged, mustached white guy decked in camo was having a blast making stromboli.
“Is that stromboli for you?” I joked, waving at the empty store.
He responded by smiling and then following us out of the shop to offer a sample of the glutenous Italian meat-and-cheese turnover, which I promptly scarfed down. Inspired by the generosity, I reentered the store to ask the two about nearby campsites, to which two customers entering the store also offered ideas. It was a riot of friendly advice, all dispersed by Sam — the stromboli guy — casually suggesting we camp on his property for the night, just up the road. When we accepted, he immediately took a ten-minute break to drive us up, give a tour of the property, show off his greenhouse, set us up on a beautiful plateau above the house with grandiose 360-degree views, offer us showers, fill our water, and introduce us to his two cool daughters. In the middle of all this, a couple of Sam’s goats did the goat thing and attacked the buggy.
According to the family, there were originally two goats: Starsky and Hutch. They grew up together but then a bear ate Hutch up on the plateau above the house (where we were to camp for the night). One of Sam’s daughters said that Starsky became so depressed that he “literally had to be inside the people house to be remotely okay.” Eventually they got another goat, Walt, to fill the void.
“Now the two are insufferable, so everything’s back to normal.”
Aside from the goats, there were dogs and hounds, a kitten named Two Socks (“like from Dances With Wolves”), two cats named Storm and Heisenberg, and two six-month-old pigs better left nameless. We met every mortal soul on that property except for Sam’s lady, who maybe wanted nothing to do with her husband’s latest filthy guests.
Descending from the Rockies meant once again contending with the summer heat. After enjoying sunny 70s up in White River and mid-80s on the walk into Collbran, we topped 90 degrees on the walk out. Eight hours and 18 miles later, I felt desperate for shade. But the rest stop where we stopped to camp for the night had no natural shade. Even though it sat alongside a tributary to the Colorado River, we didn’t jump in. It takes a special brand of madness — or maybe just heat stroke — to arrive at a cool mountain creek and madly fumble with a tarp, struggling to create shade, instead of simply splashing water on your face. A couple hours later, our little shade must’ve done my mind good, because I finally had the sense to at least dip my bandana in the creek and tie it around my temples. Irritation and confusion melted away.
In that moment, I remembered to remember: We were entering the desert.
The next day we had no choice but to walk five miles along the interstate. For nearly two hours, we just grit our teeth and did it. Early on, a woman pulled over on the other side of the highway to yell across the divide, asking if we needed help. I appreciated the intention, but in reality she multiplied the danger of the situation.
We exited the interstate into what must’ve been heaven: Out of a roadside shop called Farmacy Farms came a white dude in his 30s, cool as a cucumber, who enticed us to wander over for perfectly juicy peaches, complimentary cheese curds, and local honey.
Home for the night was provided by an old hippie named Nancy, a family friend of one of my friends back home. She seemed a bit odd, ushering us into a cramped room to show off her exotic, majestic prisoners, a collection of tropical birds surely not loving their wing-clipped lives. Nevertheless, we were thankful, as she had arranged for us to set up our tent on the lovely, cool green lawn belonging to her neighbor Gwen, an even older white woman living alone in the dark cluttered house next door. Both were extremely kind. We watched some TV with Gwen, and then she offered lawn chairs so we could read outside. Later, Nancy and her humble boyfriend Candido, a Mexican (legal, Nancy made sure we knew) immigrant, fed us chicken soup for dinner and freshly picked peaches for dessert.
At the end of the week that had begun in Glenwood Springs, we walked the last six miles to our Couchsurfing host’s house in Grand Junction. Jon was about our age, a white guy working as a door-to-door window salesman. The remarkable thing to me was that, though he had studied geology in school, he had never seen the ocean — that great shaper of rocks — with his own eyes. His long hair was greasy and his demeanor low-key as he stared listlessly from his stoop through the ten-foot-tall sunflowers in his yard, maybe thinking about the girlfriend that had just left him or the booze that he’d recently stopped drinking. From time to time, he’d pick up the guitar and play. His newest roommate was a younger, punkish, razor-thin white girl named Alex who had run away from her family and ex-boyfriend in Monterey. She showed off her belly under tiny tees and denim vests, and initially acted shy or aloof though clearly eager for company, once to the point of neglecting her burrito catching fire in the microwave.
With these two gratefully providing us a home for two nights, we rested.
Grand Junction would be the last city we’d see anywhere near its size (population of 60,000) until Carson City nearly a month later. So we indulged, checking in for needed supplies at REI and eating everything in sight: home-cooked sausage pasta and greens, donuts, donuts, donuts, health nut cookies, wild berry smoothies, McDonalds, Dairy Queen, and on and on. We found a large park and read. We meditated on the past, on all the kinds of earth we’d passed. Snowy, crusty, icy earth. Muddy, slushy, dirty earth. Rocky, craggy, steep-sloped earth. Grassy, hairy, hollow earth. Running water, rinsed-off earth. Spiky, crunch, hurtful earth. Bountiful, plentiful, loving earth. Violent, burning, hungry earth.
And so much earth yet ahead. I tried my best to plan out the route by studying every map I could find: Google Maps, Department of Transportation county maps, atlas maps, National Forest Service maps, BLM maps, locals’ mental maps — maps, maps, maps! The route question interested me but I was no longer too concerned about finding places to sleep because the desert is full of open space. The bigger question would be water. Water is a yes or no question. If the answer isn’t yes, there can be no peace. Well, maybe some tripped out spiritual peace that not only accepts death but gladly welcomes it, but certainly not your everyday physical or mental peace. But we’d figure it out. We would walk across the desert, it would be hot and wearisome, and then one day we’d see it all from a comfortable, Californian perspective — and what a dream it will all seem. The flame of the idea. The babble, the threat, the execution, and launch. The incessant fears and doubting, the pulsing ego, the emptying and filling always in balance and counterbalance, the eating, drinking, smoking, sitting, standing, walking, finding, sleeping, being.
These are the kinds of thoughts I wrote down in my journal. Though I knew I would treasure the entries later, writing in my journal every evening sometimes felt like a grueling chore or forced ritual. Other times, it came easier, more naturally — like other forms of writing, like other forms of living.
Poetic idealism is one thing, but reality is another: The last day of July, we walked 15 miles in the 90-degree heat. Good lord. It dawned on me that we would be experiencing this for awhile. No ice cream shops. No shops at all. No nothing. Just dirt in your eyes and hair, hot black pavement under your feet, confused and air-conditioned passersby staring, and a seemingly infinite sprawl of desert in all directions. Whose idea was this? Oh well, we had a simple strategy: Get good sleep. Awake in the early cool. Walk briskly before the midday heat. Chill quietly in the shade. Drink water all day and all night. Over and over again, join the sun, moon, and stars in a cosmic waltz of death, delight, life.
DESERET
On the first of August, we reached Utah. Though we’d spent our last night in Colorado at an overly paved and polished state park, our first night in Utah would be spent sleeping on the side of an abandoned road near the border.
Similar to the beginning of the entire trip, I felt happy, excited, relieved, scared, nervous, confused, confident, brave, hungry, sad, tired, thoughtful, inspired, and full of wonder. But if there was ever a day to get your head out of the far future and back to the present here and now, this was the day. We started walking as the full blue moon bowed to the sun, walked on and on in the blazing afternoon heat, and then, just we settled under an old bridge — Crash! That old lightning and thunder.
Once again, my love and I had no choice but to propel ourselves 13 miles forward on I-70, admittedly not the safest place in the world to walk. There was a massive shoulder to protect us from supersonic big rigs and RVs but the real danger was the constant slipping into complacency. It’s incredible what a person can get used to. One minute you’re 100% engaged in not getting run over, the next you’re gazing into the clouds, dreaming about that corned beef hash that’s coming up for dinner…
A hundred and something million years ago, eastern Utah was under the sea. You could guess this by walking there. Dry mesas in the distance looked like little islands of shoreline. But down where we were, on the seafloor, it was all flat fields of sand occasionally dotted by springy green things. To the right, a seemingly never-ending serpent of the deep wound its slow course, hugging the hills. To the left, schools of creatures raced to and fro.
By the fourth day, we had Utah down to clockwork. Rise with the bright white moon. Walk with the sunrise. Walk, walk, walk the deteriorating gravel of the long-since-last-paved highway. Scare off the dashing rabbits, lizards, deer, birds, cougars, and rattlesnakes. Drink, drink, drink. Pee if you can, shit if you must, ride the interstate when without options, pick a god, pray for the best.
Answer the questions: “Yes, we are walking across the country. Yes, I’ll take your business card. Yes, I’ll let you know when we safely finish.”
One woman driving west on I-70 exited and came back around on the eastbound side to say hello. She had a good hunch we were up to something because she’d been reading Tyler’s book. After gifting us sparkling water, beer, and good vibes, she told us about her tiny homes company — PAD Tiny Houses, or Portland Alternative Dwellings. She told us we had to get in touch when we finished: “You’re practically celebrities!”
By our fifth day in Utah, the signs of home were everywhere: Californian license plates, a worn-out tourist wearing a CALI shirt, the (ugly, Natalie said) juniper shrubs, and, best of all, the cute Filipino girl at the post office who knew the San Francisco suburb where I was born and raised. All these moments can make a man dream he’s already back home eating ice cream on a couch, only to be snapped back to reality by the sight of a rabbit lying in the road sawed in half with its heart hanging by a bloody thread (artery?). Your lady can’t take it anymore, she only got four hours of sleep the night before, the front tire just went flat, and you really may not make it to the toilet this time.
But it’s okay. What goes down, must come up.
The sixth day, we spoke to two souls. One was an Emery County sheriff, who stopped us on the highway to make sure we were okay. The other was a young white woman driving her pickup down the dusty road where we sat reading. Slowing to a crawl but not stopping, she just leaned out to say “Hiiiiii” with the sweetest smile in the galaxy. And then Natalie and I were alone again, camped near a railroad overpass along our little lonesome road.
The next morning, we saw the same girl again as we walked past her campsite. Her name was Eleanor and, as Vice President of Slipnot (maker of earrings, quarter rings, and other jewelry) she was out hunting gems sourced from the great quarry that is Utah. Her friend told us to look out for dinosaur fossils: “If it sticks to your tongue — porous — it’s a fossil.”
“We’re camping in Oregon tonight!” declared Eleanor with her wide smile, unwittingly reminding me again how close we were to home.
Sure, they had many hours of driving ahead of them, but the fact remained: They would make it to the west coast that night. The sheer possibility made my mouth water for a Mission burrito.
But, no, we were still in Utah, where the temperatures had dropped dramatically. Under desert rain, we carved our way through a canyon lined with massive boulders, some precariously balanced, others left wherever they’d tumbled. and then emerged into a wide open flatland. We followed the Old Spanish Trail to a rock that looked like a chimney, and camped west of a corral. The view was sublime as we picnicked in the rain.
The next day, we walked 20 miles and eight hours to town, ducking into a grocery store just as a wickedly violent thunderstorm swept through. But all the luck ended there. We half-ate crappy Mexican food, the rest congealed into colorful plastic, and then had to back-track through crusty mud to a makeshift campsite. What a difference 24 hours makes: From the solitude and beauty of the desert to camping in a city dump, surrounded by broken glass and rusty nails with a coal plant for a view.
Downs and ups, downs and ups. The next morning I shared our upcoming route with a local.
“That’s a really good plan,” he said.
He was right. After a grueling 19 miles uphill to Joes Valley, and another three around the reservoir, we made it to the campground where we’d spend a whole rest day. And what a privilege it was to rest in that luscious valley. After oatmeal in the morning, my love and I each diverted ourselves separately, I meandering into the woods to listen to Caribou’s Swim and write verse:
HERE
they said there would be no food
but there is— grains, nuts, fruitthey said there would be no water
but there is— crystal running clearthey said there would be no warmth
but there is — two hearts zipped up in onethey said there would be no air
but there is — that’s how i’m here.NOW
when rivers carve canyons deep and pour out from the valley
when mountaintops touch the sky, the clouds their rightful crown
when those white clouds morph, crash, boom, and cover all in darkness
when through the air rain tumbles down , down, downwhen teeth tear bone and flesh, and taste a little life
when trees stretch wide their woody arms unafraid of axes
when the wind pierces fast, sharp, invisible, and mighty
when the moon tosses the ocean and waxes, wanes, waxeswhen the sun arises, sails, and sets in blinding, blazing glow
when the stars pierce your midnight dreams, well, that’s when you’ll know.
As the sun reached its zenith, Natalie and I strolled down to the reservoir, where we stripped and bathed in the midday paradise. We lay down to dry, read for a bit, and then later returned to camp in time to hide from a light rain straying from the edge of a storm.
The day of rest was essential, especially because the next day we climbed a mountain. But thanks to a bit of a downhill at the end of the day, we still did 19 miles. With a cool wind blowing, grey skies overhead, and storms scattered across the valley, I couldn’t help but wonder where the desert had gone.
Our 12th day in Utah, we descended from our perch in Manti-La Sal National Forest the easy 10 miles to Ephraim, the largest city in its county with a population just over 6,000. We ate McDonald’s for breakfast, and then paid a visit to the Forest Service office — where they had already heard all about us — to confirm we had a good route ahead of us.
Though we’d had campground showers every few days, we hadn’t slept inside since Grand Junction, so we decided to indulge in some lodging for the night. One inexpensive place came up on my phone, so we went to check it out. An ogre, or maybe an old white woman with dry desert hair, dead skin, yellow-brown crusty toenails, and a confused, annoyed, and disgusted expression screwed into her face opened the door to the motel “office,” which was really a putrid living space reeking of decaying shit, while some other white woman, younger, skulked in the back. A room for the night, we were informed, would be $55 if paid in cash or $58 with a credit card, but when I asked if they had a laundry machine, the ogre went “huh?” So I asked again and got “hrumh?” I tried one more time and got an increasingly hostile “haughmrh?!” until the younger lady in the shadows translated: No, they didn’t.
We decided to check in across town at the Willow Creek Inn.
In our room, Natalie thought she caught me ogling myself in the mirror, but really I was just admiring the two massive mosquito bites above my left eye, thrown in sharp relief by the room’s bright fluorescent lights. I wondered: Was it one lucky bug or two that had sucked the blood out of my brain?
The next day, another 19 miles and another massive hill to climb in the midday heat. At the end of it, a campsite amid cow pies and thunderstorms. Didn’t matter. Beans and rice for dinner made everything alright.
Finally, capping our second full week in Utah, we walked 25 miles from the Uinta National Forest to an abandoned road southwest of Nephi. With a low of 68 and high of 93 that day, we were definitely feeling desert vibes again. When I saw a highway sign pointing to LAS VEGAS, I had to consult the map: 500 miles to Carson City, 520 to California. Translation: One month to the Golden State. In between? One or five more days in Utah, and then the loneliest highway in America.
BREATH OF THE UNIVERSE
with a breeze at your back
and the sun setting,
this hot, desolate dryness
seems bearable.
you can almost see yourself
descending
water-laden
into the great basin,
full of fascination, bewilderment,
life. through
the viscous, transparent waves
emanating from everything
at a distance,
you can almost see yourself
escaping, recovering
what you believed was lost.
your self,
it is always seen,
infinite eyes peering
out of rocks and soil and sky and rain
because
everybody enjoys a good look in the mirror.
and at this wild desert masquerade
you climb and climb,
heaving, huffing
the desert dunes
until you reach the top, where you sigh
a breeze.
