We spent our Thanksgiving break climbing down in Indian Creek... Creeksgiving! Driving overnight after classes, we shotgunned PBRs with the sunrise in the parking lot and headed to the crag to climb some splitters. Jamming fingers in corner crack systems, thrashing up offwidths, thin hands soaring up inside a cave... we climbed it all. Life in the desert is so unique, so simple, such a vital part of me. The warmth that bathes your face as the sun rises above the far hills. The grit showering down into your eyes and crunching between your teeth on climbs. The hot flames and thin, fragrant smoke from a burning juniper. The brilliant purples, oranges, blues as the desert chameleons into night. The smooth, striped walls of a slot canyon twisting out of sight. An impossibly blue sky overhead. The swath of brilliant stars and swollen moon that submerges the landscape in moonlight. It's the stuff of Desert Solitaire, of adventure, the final untamable landscape. And Abbey is right, you have to leap out of your car, rip off your shoes, and run out into it all. You have to pull cactus spines from your skin, have to nap in the dirt, have to get away from society and up cliffs or down canyons or along trails. I had never been to the desert up until three years ago, I had no idea what I was missing. But now, from spending a collective month biking along sheer cliff rims, hiking in canyons with Anasazi ruins perched high above, jumping into icy potholes, and climbing the golden cliffs, the desert has worked its way into my life it a permanent fashion. I've become part of the annual desert pilgrimage, the mass migration to seek sunlight and adventure and a freeing of the soul.
