Tenting, Burr Trail, Long Canyon, Escalante

By Luci Shaw Even when I close my eyes, even later in the tent, dreaming, I see banks and rivers running red. My blood has drunk color from the stones as if it were the meal I needed. I am ready to eat any beauty—these vistas of stars, storms. The mesas and vermillion cliffs. The light they magnify into the canyon. The echoes, the distances. The rocks carved with ancient knowledge. But after vast valleys I am so ready for this low notch in the gorge, the intimate cottonwoods lifting their leafy skirts and blowing their small soft kisses into my tent on the wasteland’s stringy breath. The spaces between the gusts are rich with silence. I am ready to stay in this one place, sleep, dream, breathe the grace of wind and earth that is never too much, and more than I will ever need. In this parchment land, the scribble and blot of junipers and sagebrush, each crouched separate, rooted in its own desert space, spreads low to the sand, holding it down the way the tent-pegs anchor my tent, keep it from blowing away. The way I want my words to hold, growing maybe an inch a year, grateful for the least glisten of dew. ~~~~~ Next: Sound of Circle