That favorite place

What is your favorite place?

Is yours far-away and exotic? Perhaps where you once went on a fabulous vacation?

Or is your favorite place just up the road? Somewhere you go to all the time, anytime you need to?

My favorite place is a quick drive away (but it feels remote enough).

 It's beautiful (but not so stunning that it makes it into all the guidebooks).

It's got the usual favorite elements-- water, trees, silence. Butterflies, bats, beavers too.

I like it because you can go there to see forever (well... at least all the way to the La Sals), letting the expansiveness wash over you, feeling connected to the bigger picture with distant landmarks on the horizon.

You can also go there and be surrounded by trees and living things and enveloped by comforting, glowing warm redrock.

This is what it looked like last spring

Green bursting forth

Then in early summer, when the green seemed to take over

And the mourning cloak caterpillars loved it too

In this spot, you can pop between the two worlds, from the expansive to the lush, up and down. The two best feelings in the world.

***

A favorite place must be versitile. Last winter, I liked to go here to run around on the rocks.

Continuous rocks like a racecourse

When I started working here, I decided I needed to build my confidence for scrambling on rocks (so that I wouldn’t show any hesitation or fear in front of my students.) So I started coming out each day. “I’m going to go run around on the rocks,” I’d tell my roommate as I headed out the door after work. I’d test myself bounding up steeper and steeper terrain. Seeing the effect of momentum and sheer willpower. Practicing my skills until I could bound like a gazelle.

Other times I've gone here to be still.

I learned that rocks can feel soft and inviting. So another time I even got a permit so I could stay the night.

Sometimes I’d bring my computer out when I needed to write. One time I was sitting and writing at the canyon bottom and wild turkeys walked by and didn’t even see me.

Another time I was perched on top of the rim and a great blue heron flying above traced the arc of the canyon. Not one twinge to reach for the camera. It was just for my eyes only. 

Great blue heron time

There was a week we brought our students out here for field trips.  "Over there a bat was circling just last night," I would point as we played our bat and moth game. "Look at these tracks, I think a beaver was just here, maybe if we are quiet we will see him." And they would gaze expectantly.

Beaver dam, but the water always stayed still

After lunch we would dig in the sand and feel how cool it is beneath the surface.

I hardly ever tell anyone about this place. But for the students, we tell them all to come back here and bring their parents to show them the beaver dam and the places the bats live. "This is a special secret place," we tell them, hoping they will treasure it forever.

***
On a dark, mid-January day, I come back here and run around on the rocks for a while. Then I curl up in my favorite spot in the embrace of the slickrock and cry.

The sun feels so far away

It is two days before I have to get surgery to repair a hernia that I got in my groin. The surgeon says that if I don't get it patched up, then it might strangulate which could be life-threatening if it happened when I am backpacking on a long trip. Plus it's starting to hurt.

The idea of getting surgery makes me scared. I'm scared about how painful it will be. I'm scared of the what-if's. What if I don't wake up. What if something happens and I'm not able to backpack again.

So I lay on the rocks and feel the coolness of the earth supporting me. The La Sals are covered in clouds off in the distance and wonder if I will ever again climb their peaks. I run my fingers along the sleeping branches of a cottonwood, knowing that no matter what happens to me, that this canyon will wake up in a few months, that the leaves will expand, that the caterpillars will hatch from eggs and munch away. And it is comforting to know this place will be here no matter what.