Body and Soul: Rainbow Point, Bryce National Park: Day Three

Bryce Panorama 

This voyage is also about gaining elevation – a sub-category of the sense of space.  I full well know the symbolism involved.  Climbing up the mountain for the epiphany – the divine revelation.  I don’t really care how shop worn the imagery is; the physical act of gaining elevation, swiftly, dramatically, is an embodied activity.  You must do it to realize how ‘real’ these symbols are; but this physical activity provides a trigger for something else; a state or point where the physical and some other state, some other dimension of things, is a detectable, living presence.

But our visit to Bryce Canyon National Park, and its impressive elevation, is not an epiphany in the Christian sense of the word.  God or a god will not be appearing.  Rather, I use it in the older,  more literal sense of the Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia, "manifestation, and striking appearance." This is the sudden realization of something. Nothing literal may appear. Nothing outwardly happens.  It is already there – only a shift in emphasis has occurred.

This all sounds fuzzy, but there is no remedy for that.  I have tried to attach this experience to the activity of the body, which is grounding for all; we all understand our bodies.  Who isn’t moved by the rich, textured excitement leading to orgasm?  We feel that episode through our total body. Orgasm is an embodied act and yet transcendent.  We move away from the body, through the body. In a similar way, Bryce National Park is a somatic experience that brings us beyond the flesh  An extended orgasm?  Not quite, but a sub-experience of that blessed release.

switchbacks going down

With its highs and lows, Bryce awakens the body.  Perhaps because of this, Bryce is far less visited than Zion.  The park is so high, and nearly always cool, and quite often cold.  So only a paltry 2.6 million people visited Bryce in 2017.  In 2007 just over a million people visited Bryce.    Attendance has grown steadily every year, and shows no sign of stopping.

So we park easily. The rim of the Bryce’s canyon is no more than a few feet from cabins and lodges. Immediately the shock of an open expanse of upright rock and a stupendous drop. One column of stone, called Thor’s Hammer, stands alone, suggestive and phallic.  Maybe that keeps people away? But from the rim, people do mill about. They are from all over the world.  Chinese arrive by bus.  They are enthusiastic travelers, and intrepid.

We begin to walk down the innumerable switchbacks of Navajo Trail.  Nearly everyone hikes this popular hike, a long descent down a narrow canyon. The trail is 1.3 miles long, with a net loss of 550 feet.  And of course, what goes down must come up. 

So as we descend, the crowd thins.  Some Lot’s wife type folks look back and realize that they must climb up what they climbed down and panic.

down & up

We reach the bottom, to Bryce Creek, which is dry, which is a fortunate occurrence.  When it isn’t, the trail is sensibly is closed.  The creek cascades biblically through the canyon, depositing swales of sand, rock and debris, carrying the living and rendering them dead.

The space of the canyon is closed; the unfathomable expanse of Bryce is extruded between stone walls.  This is dreamlike… the extrusion of space between walls of unconquerable stone.  As if

switchbacks going up

Space is tamed by nature – but that domestication is an illusion.  Stones are constantly tumbling down.  Sand is always shifting.  Water and wind sculpt and destroy. We climb back, our legs leaden with lactic acid.  At the top I want to experience Space on a dramatic and wide pallet.  So we head to the south highlands of the park.

Few visit Bryce's south.  Navajo Trail is taxing; perhaps the switchbacks beat the spunk out of most. It is a long drive, and at the far end of the road there is a vast abyss.  If you wish to go further, you must hike through rugged and unforgiving terrain.

the park high point

Rainbow Point, at 9100 feet, offers wide views of Bryce, and the expanse of the Grand Escalante, a series stepping stone rock layers
that expose 50 million years of the Earth’s layered history.  On this clear, crisp day (35 F) we can see distant Arizona on the horizon.  But the essence of this place is the weightless feeling.  We are somatically released by the air, the views, and the sun falling across an expanse of space we fail to comprehend. The grid of the senses are skewed.  Something is far off.  What can it be?  I know less of what I want after gazing at the distant horizon.

I walk away from Rainbow Point satisfied with my dissatisfaction.  I have uncovered a great necessity that I never knew existed.  I need to “climb” a peak of 10,000 feet.  It is a milestone that I must accomplish.  But I question the fitness of my body.  I wonder what benefit it will accomplish for my soul.  And will I have time before I die?

high-point views i

high-point views ii