Specifically, in the first part of the story, we were a group of four: me, an old High School friend (Fran) and part of his family (his spouse, Frankie and his daughter, Eva). Together we had spent our first three days in Canyonlands, car camping at a solitary (but easily accessible) group campsite by the name of “Split Top.” It was a wonderful site with two natural attractions: Salt Creek and Spring Cave, both within a few minutes stroll of the campsite. We also took longer hikes (with light day packs) during the second and third days of our visit.

When the fourth day came, it was time for Frankie and Eva to head back home so that they could keep obligations that they had made well in advance of what had been, for them, an essentially impromptu trip. For Fran and me, however, we had been planning for weeks on being out camping until the 13th so we fully intended to use our last two days to their fullest.

Stopping by the Park’s Visitor Center, we learned that there had been a last-minute cancellation by some folks to use their one-night, back-country camping permit in the Chesler Park area. As such, Fran and I snatched up the open permit. The distance to our designated back-country campsite was just slightly less than six miles along a trail that gained and lost maybe a few hundred feet in elevation. In other words, not a particularly strenuous effort to make with backpacks weighing no more than 30 pounds apiece.

Because the weather forecast for the next several days called for clear, calm skies and temperatures ranging between 60-90F, I calculated that I could get by without rain gear or a tent and would therefore only need my sleeping bag and a thermo-rest pad for camp. I further reasoned that I would do without any hot meals or hot drinks and therefore could further reduce weight by not packing a stove, fuel and cook kit. The warmer temps also hopefully meant that my knees would not bother me as much as they sometimes do in cooler weather.

When we arrived at the Elephant Hill/Chesler Park Trail Head, the parking lot was jam-packed with day and overnight hikers preparing for their excursions. Ed Abbey’s quip about National Parking Lots came to mind but then again, one look toward the country that we would be hiking into dispelled the notion of wall-to-wall people. In every direction, one saw a vast desert wilderness, full of various sandstone formations (predominately of the “Cedar Mesa” geologic layer). The area was known as the Needles District because it was full of spires, towers, hoodoos, cock’s combs and other vertical, columnar rocks. There was even one formation, far off in the distance, that looked very much like Arizona’s “Weaver’s Needle.”

Fran, tall and with long legs, set off up the trail in the direction of Elephant Rock while I continued to stare into the free (and not very detailed) Park Service map, wondering why, depending on where you looked within the first mile of the trail map, the area bore the names of Elephant Rock, Elephant Hill and Elephant Canyon. Oh well, it mattered not as all the trails we had been on thus far had been amazingly well marked with delicate little shale cairns placed about every 30 meters.

I hustled to catch up with Fran but we really didn’t talk much along the trail as it was steep and narrow and conversation was difficult. The Park does a good job of informing visitors that they should never stray from the trail due to the damage that can easily be done to the fragile “biological soil crusts” (a living matrix of lichens, mosses, cyanobacteria and other microscopic constituents). Another good reason for never leaving the trail is that it would be easy to get lost which, during much of the year when temps get dangerously high, could be a death sentence as there is very little water available to hikers other than what they carry themselves.

Off and on throughout the day, we had panoramic views once we had scaled various domes and small mesa-tops. At other times, we inched our way along narrow fractures in the rocks or strolled through shaded canyon corridors. At no point were we ever far from other people but we knew that this would change when we arrived at our permitted back-country campsite which was at the terminus of a spur trail that ran along a southwesterly facing rock wall within the otherwise open, grassy area known as Chesler Park.

We got to our wonderfully isolated campsite late in the afternoon and immediately sought some rare shade to wait out the remaining heat of the day. Somewhere to the northwest -- not far as the raven flies but certainly not within view from our vantage point -- was the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers. It was these two rivers that divided the Park into its three districts: ours, the Needles; Island in the Sky, sandwiched in between the Green and the Colorado; the Maze, to the west of the Green River. So much beautiful country; so little time to explore.

Fran and I munched on snacks and finally had time to catch up on each other’s lives since our last trip (the Ashley National Forest in northern Utah). Unlike me, Fran had yet to retire although he was working a more flexible schedule since he turned 60. His life was full with his own family of four plus three siblings and their families scattered around the country. His parents had both recently died (within a year of each other), having made it into their late 80s. Not only did Fran have a gratifying career and active family life, he also had a diverse array of hobbies and interests including hunting, fishing, ice-hockey, sailing, snow-skiing, composing and playing music, traveling and probably many other things we had never even discussed.

Yet, for the first time in the 45+ years that we had been friends, I could tell that he was wrestling with disillusionment. He wasn’t keen to talk about whatever struggles he had alluded to in his marriage when we talked on the phone in preparation to this trip but I could tell that was a significant component of his worries. The term he used to describe what he and his wife had been going through sounded like something coined in recent years:-- “differentiation.” I assumed it meant couples who, late in life, find out that they are growing apart from each other and, as such, begin doing fewer things together while still living as a “joint household.”

My guess, knowing Fran quite well -- and Frankie much less well -- was that they were going through what many marriages go through once the effervescent phase of life starts to flatten out. I also sensed that, like many sensitive people today, they found the nastiness in the world of politics; the never-ending culture wars; the growing threats to the natural world and the general social ennui to be things that bled over into domestic life. It seems almost a truism that the best people always seem to feel the hurt of the world the most acutely.

Once the heat subsided, Fran and I strolled along a nearby arroyo (hiking in dry stream beds is allowed in Canyonlands) and then, before it got too dark, we had dinner and set up camp. That evening, we sat on a rocky outcrop and quietly watched the stars and planets emerge in an indigo sky. We were also privileged to see several utterly brilliant, long-streaking shooting-stars.

The next day, we got an early start to beat the heat and managed to hike back to the Trail Head several hours quicker than we had hiked out to our back-country campsite the day before. Once we were back at the trucks, the sun was nearing its zenith and the blacktop roads were beginning to shimmer. We knew the time had come to say our good-byes and hit those shimmering highways.

On my drive out to Utah, my CD play list had consisted entirely of jazz from the 40’s through the 60’s (Miles, Monk, Mingus and more). For whatever reason, on the drive home I wanted to hear loud, raucous music and, from the time I hit Monticello till the time I pulled into my driveway in Lakeside, I seared my eardrums with the likes of Iggy, Nirvana, Black Rebels and others of that ilk.

Moods change. Moods change. People change. Life changes. Even the stars themselves are in steady-state of change. This makes existence both a joy and a trial. And since I can’t alter that, I guess I’m okay with it. It’s the other people in my life that I find myself worrying about….