Sometimes I drive without my seatbelt. Eyes peeled for a dirt road, deep swimming hole, or a tree to pee behind. Hands on the top of the wheel, ready to turn at any moment. Back straight, leaning over the wheel slightly.
Aha! Overlook ahead. Throwing on my turn signal, I whipped left off the highway. Not that it mattered since there were no cars on either side of the road.
For the last four hours, I’ve been driving through the strangest landscape I’ve ever seen in my life. I didn’t even have the words to describe what I was looking at, so I just stared open mouthed at the rock layers that rose up and crumbled back to the cracked, scorched earth.
Taking notes of the differences to try and understand what was going on. Sometimes the red rocks were smooth and tall, while the brown and orange rocks could be blocky and stacked haphazardly on top of each other. I even saw a giant white rock balancing on an upside down crimson ice cream cone.
Driving up a long paved hill to the advertised overlook, I rolled my windows down to welcome in the desert air. Kind of chilly and it tasted a bit wet.
I thought deserts were always hot?
Finally climbing to the top of the hill, my mouth dropped and my foot let off the gas. Creeping into the empty parking lot, I couldn’t comprehend the sudden appearance of blue in a red landscape.
For the last two hundred miles, the color palette stretched from copper to scarlet, vermillion to apricot. Hints of brown rust with the occasional purple pop. Deep rose to flaming hot red was the norm out here. The single splash of blue came from the sky, never the rocks.
Parking and getting out of the car, I stared into what made no sense. A Virginia girl is used to forests, but there wasn’t a single tree in sight. The carrot colored ground stretched out in every direction, but in between the pumpkin bubbles and tomato topped towers was a deep blue.
Is that water?
It was as if the earth were deceiving me, and squinting my eyes would help me uncover the truth. Walking over to an informational sign I read for the first time the words: “Lake Powell.”
That’s a lake?
It didn’t look like any lake I’d ever seen. It seemed so huge, but I hadn’t passed any creeks that could feed into this body of water. At least I don’t think I did. Lakes are normally lush with forests and animals and life, but this place seemed so…dead. Unable to comprehend so much water in the driest landscape I’d ever seen, I shrugged and turned my attention toward making a sandwich.
The passenger seat of my little Hyundai Sonata was my official pantry. I liked keeping things organized and the best way to drive across the country without a passenger princess is to have all the snacks in arms reach. This wasn’t my first rodeo, it was my second. I’d learned a thing or two.
Shivering as the wind whipped against my bare skin, I reached into the backseat closet and pulled out a rainbow streaked ski jacket from the 80s that I stole from my summer camp’s costume closet. Next, I rummaged for the bread, peanut butter and banana.
Climbing onto the hood of my car, I sat criss cross applesauce and began to assemble my sandwich. Occasionally catching myself staring out into the distance with the knife hovering over the peanut butter jar.
What the fuck is this place? It makes no sense.
By the time I successfully spread peanut butter onto one slice of bread, I welcomed the idea that it was a bunch of water out there. How it got there was beyond my imagination.
Another car pulled into the parking lot and I sighed, not excited to share solitude. It was a fancy little sports car, all shiny and clean. Unlike my dust covered white car with scratches and dents that I decorated it with. A woman stepped out of the car in heels and a long floor length regal dress. The wind blew the billowy dress out behind her like you see in the commercials. The parking lot was her runway and she knew how to use it.
Damn, she’s pretty!
I could smell her perfume as she walked closer, toward the informational signs. Wondering if she could smell my body odor, I looked down at my sandwich to avoid eye contact. Placing sliced bananas in a neat row on top of the peanut butter, my sandwich was complete. The model with long curly hair was looking at me as I began to take my first bite.
“You look really cool right now,” she said to me as she passed by.
Huh?
The sandwich hovered in the air inches from my mouth. Smiling awkwardly, I said, “Thanks, you look really pretty right now.”
She blushed, as if she didn’t know. It occurred to me that perhaps neither of us could see ourselves clearly. A man got out of the fancy little car and followed her with a big lens camera. She posed in front of this supposed “lake” as I ate my sandwich and tried not to watch the sudden photoshoot that unfolded.
They left before I finished my sandwich, apparently getting what they came for. I sat on the hood of my car wondering about this weird place, never imagining that I would pull over to this exact overlook six years later.
Repeating the same drive that I hardly remembered, hands on the top of the wheel, eyes peeled for a place to pull over. Throwing on my left turn signal suddenly and driving up the long hill that obscured the overlook. Pulling up in a red truck in the dead of winter, I parked and my mouth dropped once again.
Holy shit…I’ve been here.
Having learned the words for the carrot colored ground (slickrock) and the balanced rock on an upside down ice cream cone (hoodoo). Knowing now that Lake Powell was a reservoir, built by man, engineered to trap water in an otherwise dry place.
Still, my eyes were glued to the sudden emergence of blue waters in a barren landscape of crispy orange. Mesmerizing and yet, different than I remembered.
Wasn’t there more water?
I didn’t have a camera phone back then, so there were no pictures of me sitting on top of my car in that 80’s rainbow ski jacket overlooking the reservoir. Only the faint memory of there being way more blue than I was seeing now.
Hungry for information, I pulled out my desert books on the Four Corners and began to study the geology of Lake Powell, known to me now as Glen Canyon. Inside the truck this time, hiding from the wind.
A frigid wind that cut into my skin under my puffy jacket. In that moment I regretted giving that cool 80’s jacket to my friend. Oh well.
It couldn’t be more than 30 degrees outside, but inside the truck it was warm enough to stay in sandals. I had two years of sleeping in cold deserts in a negative 20 degree sleeping bag under my belt by that point.
Unable to focus on the Laramide Orogeny geologic event, I pulled out my computer instead and wrote down a little secret: There is a part of me that wants to throw my whole life in Colorado away and move here.
Beth Henshaw 