Scarlet Days

I leave in an uncertain morning, torn in between sun and snow. I drive along Utah Lake, probably seen from the sky as well. But further along than the Upper Salt Lake, I only guess its blue shades winding through snowed maybe salty too mounts. Then I leave Interstate 15 towards East and landscapes both slowly and drastically change as I am going through some unknown mountains. I meet the other face of Utah; from pastel, the scenery reveals its ardent red under the snow. I meet the other face of Utah, blushed by an endless winter sun, soon cut in unreal arches and deep gorges.
Price Canyon is my first encounter. Before. After. Everything is mixed up.

I have waited for weeks, for years, for those red landscapes, I have cherished every minute of this precious wait towards this. And all of a sudden, I encounter them almost blue so white the snow is. Am I disappointed, no! I am crying so amazingly surprising they are, so little the color matters; the land gets such peculiar shapes. It is giant and unbelievable. I never cease to go down in the empty sky, some red lace on my side; I didn’t even know I had gone so high! Desert.
When I discovered Seattle, my first encounter with the US, I didn’t have any particular expectations, I only had a blurry idea about this far land across the Atlantic, contained in skyscrapers and my red deserts. Fascinated by high buildings, yearning for some red land, I nonetheless fell in love with the Olympic scenery that I had no ideas of. Even if my dream was elsewhere. Unreachable. And my dream is suddenly here, in front of my eyes, under my steps, in my hands. Thus, it looks like that when your dream comes true? It is magnificent, it is absolutely pure.
I am so grateful to have got a last ride with my faithful squire allowing me to wind throughout American destinations I have yearned for my whole life without knowing their names… For some reasons, they were stored under the Grand Canyon or the Rockies labels. But I am not there yet, then they start to majestically come true, they find their unique identity.
I am so full of joy, of love, of opportunities. I can’t believe it. I can feel all my cells reacting with this American transformer journey. Because America is profoundly transcending me after Canada has given me peace. America feeds my free fire, my life fire, my love fire. America gives right to my boldness, I am allowed to dream big and believe in the impossible. America allows me to want more, all the time. To be an endless wanderer. When Canada calms me down, it grounds me, it made me want to stay, to settle down. Those two countries resonate with two parts of myself that I wouldn’t want to have to choose, even if they are irreconcilable. Even I have already chosen in some aspects since I am still traveling. Or maybe it was only about different steps in my life… Canada gave me the opportunity to focus on my personal challenges in order for America to get me out in the world, confident and fearless. Canada’s peace helped me being ready for consuming America.
And I wonder if this peculiar feeling, if this personal metamorphosis, is related to history. I feel like Canadian history is less burning, less valued and therefore don’t resonate as much in my cells. Thus, I crossed beautiful Canadian full of my present, full of myself and my own revelations. Because there was nobody to tell the place’s history anymore and the land there doesn’t know how to speak out anymore, its translators vanished. History is not actually less burning in Canada, it is only burning in the British way, with a tissue on it. It was not a fire but a dark suffocating smoke destroying everything with no mercy. American flames lefts scares, they tell a story. Thus, when I cross American landscapes, I am moved by other stories than mine. I am mesmerized, my heart glows with hundreds of lives and erase any wise decisions. I am blown by a foolish wind, flown from one idea to the other, from courage to risks…

Pushed by that idea of being invincible, I almost rise above high red plateaux cracked with canyons. Huge, everywhere, almost sculptural. Stunned that one side is snowed and one is still ardent and immortal red. I finally reach the Arches, the well named park.
In Arch land, it is a piece of art mastered by the Earth for thousands of years. It sometimes looks like Egyptian sculptures and opens window towards the sky. It is red, it is white, it keeps the memory of its dry nature even if winter has showed up. It moves my world upside down.
And when I start to climb towards Delicate Arch, it is an unspoken emotion. I have seen the pictures, yet I am not prepared for this. I didn’t know it would be so huge, endless, peaceful and silent. I didn’t really have any expectations, I was already perfectly happy with the red earth and peculiar sculptures. I was full of this precious and rare gift, of this winter red desert. But I linger, hanging to this vertigo’s arch, for endless minutes, enjoying the silence only broken by the raven’s flight, acknowledging my life’s turning point. I am changed forever today because my dream has come true.

Next morning, I reach Canyonland, a bit like a backward zoom from the arches to the canyons, like I wanted to see the bigger picture.
My first stop is at Mesa Arch, less impressive, less fragile than the ones I observed in the other park. But the arch doesn’t really matter, the window opened on the vertigo moves me. It is a huge red and white emptiness in which you don’t really know which is which, except for the small needles in the background. The scenery is almost frozen, here and now, forever. Even the fog seems still, yet it goes through and blinds me for a minute.

For a second yesterday, I though the snow would jeopardize my dream, that it hid this red land. When it actually makes my experience more unique and precious. The snow draws sunny rivers in the canyons.
The weather is so grey for a few hours, as I am looking at how the Colorado River and its little green sister cut the earth, as i observe the gigantic hole left behind by a meteor apparently. However, the scenery changes around noon. Some landscapes are sublimated by grey sky and clouds. Utah is not one of them. Sun undoubtedly transform its land forms. I can gaze to the cracks’ hearts. I would love so much to go down there, so deep, to look my vertigo in the eyes.

I go higher instead, I go to the edge of the island in the sky, so I can admire rocky deserts that both hand of men and the earth’s strength has drawn in my eyes. It is so strange to think human communities – nomadic indigenous people, stubborn gold diggers – used to live here and that the scenery is now frozen forever, cut from any human interaction. I gaze at those small mountains, lower than me who is so close to the top of the world, and I think about Spirit*, stallion of the Cimarron, running from one red tower to the other like he was flying. Ultimate goal for this eagle dreamer!
I walk along all the sunny cliffs to Murphy Point from where I can’t leave. Absolutely alone. I am the queen of the world in front of a giant world. I sing. I fall in love. I am perfectly now. How could I leave ever?
I have to leave the absolute look on the world at some point though, I go the other side in order to gaze at the sunset on the rocks. To get mesmerized by the pinkish sky from where the immortal star has just disappeared.

Cold bothers me again during the night, making it very easy to live early, even if the sun hasn’t come out yet. I take my upgrading course in Arches NP. Landscapes color with the sun, from North to South, from one window to another. Windows that actually look like huge doors through the Other World. And all of a sudden, all the arches rise on a clear blue sky.
Playing hide and seek with my gas tank, I push towards the park’s heart that I practically ran two days ago, I get lost in Devil Garden but not too much. Then, uncertain, I fly to the Broken Arch. Mesmerized with the blue sky. With the giant emptiness. With those strange messy sculptures suddenly faded. I get used to the scenery though… I don’t get bored, but I don’t have any words for my feelings anymore. It is then time to go South in this bright day, to make a detour towards Canyonland Needles district to another “rock my world” moment.

I think I have seen everything, I have already admired this red landscapes and cracks, I am less prepared for what is coming. It is still Canyonland but it is something else, it is so different. Because now I don’t look from above, I am winding in between lonely plateaux tumbling down in rocks. Red, so red. White hasn’t joined the party. I am fascinated and I am not even at the end of the road. It is only an appetizer for what comes next, dancing on the hills. It draws long needles towards the day, like shadows before the sun!
I yearn to get closer but I am actually driving further away. I ride towards a land, or more exactly a rock, even more cracked, even more meandering. It creates mushroom and wood shoes and elephants, Hindu temples, needles like teeth, spins in between gorges. I am an island in the sky. I fast-forward as the sun is setting and draws new shapes. It turns to ochre, and vermillion, and blood-red. I finally feel the red soil under my crampons, with no layer of snow in between, as I walk under prehistorical mushrooms shelter. I can taste the smell of it.

And the sun already makes this scenery even redder. You definitely don’t look at the sun here, too often watched elsewhere, you gaze at the changing light moving on the rocks, even when it is only a reflection on another reflection. It suddenly sheds tears of blood on the canyons… And it turns to pink, purple, another kind of blue, with only the very bright red on the opposite rock. And I already leave this other island, North redder needles in my mirror. I linger and keep company to the twilight in my first marvels.

At the end of this three flamboyant days, I still try to understand how those landscapes happen to get sculpted like this? Of course, miners opened some cracks but the Colorado River and its little green sister did most of the job. But water, snow, erosion did most of the job. It is almost magic! I remember some believed, and still believe, those landscapes could only be a divine creation, like it would sublimate them. For me, knowing nature, by unbelievable processes, has created those giant emotions, makes it even more mysterious.

And the weirdly shaped but still golden moon finish my today’s tale.