Life in Death Hollow, Part II

George set up a cowboy camp on some pine needles under a mighty ponderosa at the edge of our newfound beach. The winds had begun to whip a bit, though, and that talked me into throwing a tent together a dozen or so yards away to keep the blowing sands at bay as best I could. The sand’s fine nature meant each gust would slap you with a handful of granules as if fired by the world’s tiniest shotgun, and it was that same fine sand that caught me off-guard when I tried to take a brief dip in the creek to cool off.

I had read plenty about there being quicksand in the bottom of the canyon. None of it epic enough to swallow one whole, or anything, but enough to suck a shoe off an unsuspecting footstep or send you tumbling when your would-be gait was interrupted by a suction tackle. I was prepared to run into some of that eventually. I was not prepared, however, for my first step off the bank to end up with my right leg knee-deep in sand despite it being a pool so clear you could see both bottom and your own reflection. I had stripped down to my skivvies, after all, and did not have ‘digging your leg out of sand while thigh-deep in freezing water whilst mostly naked’ on this particular backpacking bingo card.

After wriggling out of it, I retreated to some rocks a few feet downstream which, I was sure, were not about to consume my limbs of their own volition. It was roughly 3 PM local time, the water was refreshing like a cold seltzer to the soul, and we spent the rest of the afternoon catching what rays remained of the sun’s attempt to heat the canyon floor before dinner. A healthy box of wine later and the depth of stars in the desert sky was enough to make me feel simultaneously insignificant and lucky to be a part of it all.

Five steps into the next morning, we were in the water. We would stay there for the majority of the day despite the brisk 38 degree temperature outside. Given the presence of so, so much poison ivy latent within the banks of the canyon, it was the most prudent of routes, especially since the water was rarely more than knee-deep. Walking wet, after all, was far preferable to walking itchy, sleeping itchy, and waking up itchier, even if it meant cold toes and heavy shoes.

That’s George up there, by the way, marveling as we both were at the presence of such poignant ponderosas within the canyon. We’ve done a good number of pretty thorough trips through canyon country over the years, from a week in the Grand to the Maze in Canyonlands to Neon and Coyote Gulch just a couple dozen miles from Death Hollow. All had infinite perks. None hosted towering pines like these.

It cast a contrast that reminded me often of the lower alpine sections of Sequoia National Park, even if the rock that lined the canyons was sandstone rather than granite. The sandstone here often leaned gray-yellow instead of red, and the canyon/pine combination kept me looking up away from my footsteps more often than I’d advise, in hindsight. Rocks, rapids, and the damn quicksand were what should have had my gaze.

Like a DNA helix, the width of lower Death Hollow ebbed and flowed, with widths that would occasionally let you forget you were the meat of a canyon-wall sandwich to narrows that should have even the most modest threat of rain putting the fear of god within you. Through it all, though, flowed a constant source of crystal clear water, the kind of canyon country unicorn that has made it a vital destination for the peoples of the region since the advent of humanity on the continent.

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It’s December now, November having passed in a blink like a scuffed CD skipping a track. The poison ivy that lay dormant when we trekked through Death Hollow long ago awoke, rubbed folks the wrong way, and went back to sleep.

The speed with which this year got away from me scorched sound barriers, due mainly to the presence of my daughter Lucy, who my wife Sarah gave birth to in May and took our house by storm. Between her squeaks and toots and our two-and-a-half-year old Olivia being a household tornado, turning my brain back inwards to recall the trips of last spring has become a task in and of itself. Turning those recollections into legible prose has been even tougher, as has getting back on the trail to create more opportunities for these words to spill out.

It took some misfortune to bring me back here, fortunately. One of my cats sprinted through my gait as I stumbled towards the kitchen for a fizzy water last Sunday mornnig, and in dodging him I kicked a doorframe with my bare left foot hard enough to bend my pinky toe in ways that I believe now certify it as a yoga instructor. It’s black. It’s green. I’ve been in search for a pair of shoes around the house that can accommodate it while it heals, and have been ripping out the soles of old shoes in search of the most comfortable combinations.

That led me to the shoes I wore on my trip through Death Hollow, a basic pair of Nike trailrunners that I’d purchased to destroy on the trip, knowing full well they were destined for rock-rip and two dozen miles of wet walking.

The sneakers not only surged through the trip with great ease, they became my go-to workout shoes after returning home – when more than nine of my toes are functioning as designed, I wear these shoes at least three or four times a week. They are familiar, they are stinky, they are never far enough from memory to make me go look for them. On a near daily basis, they are on me, and have had every opportunity to shed themselves of all things Death Hollow for over seven months. So, it was to my great surprise that when I went to pull out their squishy soles to transfer to another old pair of shoes with a toe-box wide enough for my nearly detached digit, I uncovered a decidedly non-zero amount of sand.

Fine, red sand – the kind only Death Hollow and its slow, steady erosion can concoct.

You never finished writing about that, did you?

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I am a person who needs noise to sleep, the stillness of silence not nearly loud enough to drown out the din between my ears. The walk down Death Hollow to its confluence with the Escalante River was the finest sleep machine track I have ever heard, even if the beauty of the place was enough to keep my body wide awake through the process.

It didn’t lull me to sleep, but it lulled me into forgetting most of the rest of the world existed for a time. The bends, the narrows, the rapids and the falls all casting sounds that bounced off the canyon walls like a game of jai alai. If you were to walk ten miles through a gutter after a storm, you’d be an annoyed, miserably wet human being, yet spending an entire day shin-deep in nearly freezing water and wet sand never once felt like a hassle.

The lone dilemmas were these – don’t slip on the extremely slick rock, and try not to miss the schools of fish swimming around your feet because you were staring at something else equally as mesmerizing.

The final stretch of the holler if, like us, you move from north to south, is the narrows, where the canyon walls close in as if you’d asked them if they wanted to hear a secret. The flow of water is not fierce nor the cascades mighty, but they are pristine in their shape and direction. The green algae that laces the curves added just enough of a twinge of color as the sun shined down to make it appear as if the entire canyon was just one giant, cracked geode, the water pouring through it like a crystal.