Feeling Small

The wonders of Southern Utah's geology, healing, humility and childlike awe

I got a chance to let loose my inner child recently, staring and giggling and gushing about everything. I was in Utah, among the rocks.

Just as I am growing more comfortable with being uncomfortable, as I’ve written recently, I am also doing my best to enjoy moments, to open myself up to new experiences the way we all did when we were young.

It is a tragedy of age that we lose our wonder. Time, hardship, stress, cynicism all sap wonder like beetles killing a pine forest. One day, we wake up drained, deadened and brittle.

I rage against the dying of this light.

Nowhere, other than a tidepool by the sea, have I succeeded more completely in banishing the brittle deadness of middle age than among the rocks in Southern Utah.

I went there because my friend Sarah lives in Salt Lake City, and she desperately wanted me to see the places she loves. She spoke of them like cathedrals, playgrounds, places to wander and be awed. I’d never been there; I’d barely even driven through that region. So, after suitable cajoling, we drove down a couple weeks ago.

I get it now.

Never in my life have I seen such geologic magic. Spires of sandstone. Sheer walls, streaked with the stains of a thousand monsoon rains. Cliff faces pockmarked with the smallpox scars of whistling wind and swirling rains. Vistas of peach and azure as far as the eye can stretch. Waterfalls thundering, canyons singing, and then, the silence.

The silence of the nether regions of Southern Utah can be near total. No planes overhead, no traffic, no human din. It creeps into the stark places, where birds are few and water is a memory. The windsong dies, and you’re inside it. The Nothing.

Your heart, your breathing, become raucous rhythms that fill your ears. You involuntarily hold your breath: Am I that loud? You stand stock still, hoping your heartbeat slows. And in between those beats, you hear it: the silence of eternal stone.

If only stone were eternal. Utah’s glories are almost entirely sandstone, which is to stone as we are to the bristlecone pines that dot the heights of this place: Mere motes, wisps of stardust in between states of being. The spires and natural monuments seem older than time to us, but they will change irrevocably in only a few human lifetimes. They’re changing now, as I write this.

Wandering through this dreamscape was a series of gasps and smiles, me pointing out the many edible plants to Sarah, her pointing out the many geological oddities to me. “Look at this!” Look at that! For days, we hiked through Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, as well as other, lesser known places.

Each area was a little different, each jaw dropping in its own way. But every hike, every turn around a bend, left us feeling puny and insignificant. Shaken. It felt wonderful.

This is not an advertisement for Southern Utah. I loved it, and so might you, but my point is to suggest that you stop yourself, once in a while, and step into a space where you can hear your inner kid squeal with delight. Adult life is doing everything it can to stifle that squeal, to douse your inner fire.

Squeal, shout, laugh, run. Pick up a rock that speaks to you and carry it in your pocket. Eat berries off the bush. Climb a tree. Splash around in your underwear at the base of a waterfall showering your body with the memory of winter’s snows. Say foolish, funny things. Imagine there’s a rabbit that lives in a rock hollow carved by the wind. Play with a beetle.

Forget that time exists.

Release that little one within, if only for a day. Open yourself to the wonder again. It heals many wounds.