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In the Tracks of Edward Abbey
“Head north six miles past Elaterite Butte to Big Water Spring,” I read aloud from my tattered copy of Edward Abbey’s classic book, “Desert Solitaire.” Three friends followed my instructions and traced lines with their fingers on the maps scattered on a table in Tutt Library’s map room.
Checking the mapWe had been inspired by vivid descriptions in Abbey’s book of a remote area in Utah’s Canyonlands known as The Maze, an area Abbey compared to the Grand Canyon. We were determined to explore it for ourselves on our block break, and, with maps and the vague instructions gleaned from “Desert Solitaire,” we took off from Colorado Springs to our destination, the Maze Overlook.
Four hundred miles of pavement, another 80 of gravel, all with minimal sleep, brought us to the middle of Utah’s Green River desert by Thursday morning. Still ahead was Flint Trail.
Flint Trail descends along a series of switchbacks that cling to the only breach in the otherwise impassable cliffs bordering the mesa. The switchbacks are so tight that it appears the trail winds back on itself, like looking down 10 flights of stairs. I shifted the Jeep into four-wheel drive low, and carefully descended trail. The jeep skidded and bounced over boulders and ruts as we descended. Once at the bottom, 1,000-foot tall maroon cliffs separated us from the mesa above.
We pressed on at 10-15mph. Two friends, eager to get out of the car, rode on the sides of the Jeep. The third passenger rode in the cargo basket on the roof with one hand gripping the webbing used to lash the gear down, the other waving rodeo-style in the air. By noon we had reached the Overlook.
“That’s the end of the trail. From there you could use wings,” wrote Abbey. We did not have wings. Instead, we tied our hiking boots, hefted packs, and descended into the canyons below. The excitement of the journey thus far was soon forgotten when we were surrounded by the incredible sandstone canyons created by erosion.
Over the next three days we discovered pictographs, natural arches, and secluded natural pools. We floated in the Colorado River on our air mattresses under a hot afternoon sun and hiked miles across the mesa by moonlight. Our final morning we paused to witness the sunrise over the desert. We completed the final hike through a desert spectacularly illuminated by the golden light of the early morning hours.
By late morning the beautiful dawn had turned into a scorching day. The remains of our water was gone, a problem we had encountered frequently. With dry mouths, we climbed up the steep walls of the canyons one last time. At the top, several gallons of water were stashed in the Jeep, provisions from the comfortable daily life to which we were returning