I can't decide if I want to resume blogging or not. I reread old posts and am pleased with them, and also with the memory of what fun it was to craft them, usually out of an explosive kernel of an idea that niggled and prodded until I gave it its due. The habit of blogging was so infectious. Once I got going, ideas piled up and popped
all over the place, begging to be chosen, pinned down and expressed in
words. It would be good to experience more of that particular pleasure. And to take on more of that kind of short-term, quickly gratified intellectual challenge.
I didn't deliberately turn away from blogging. For a few weeks after my last post in January 2012, I thought often about posting. After a couple months, I thought less often (and more guiltily) about it. After a couple more, the idea flitted vaguely through my mind every now and then. I took pictures on trips and composed descriptive paragraphs in my head, thinking to write travel posts, if nothing else. But the inspiration was never sufficiently compelling to prompt an actual post. Not even when it got to be November and December and I had to see that accusing January 2012 date looming at the top of my blog whenever I checked it to see if the bloggers I follow had posted anything new. (They had. Often. See "Interesting Blogs" in the sidebar to your right and look them up.)
Twitter was the same. When I tweeted regularly, my brain developed a whole Twitter compartment, a bustling, observant mechanism that parsed the world into 140-character bursts of revelation. Twitter, too, was fun. It, too, was infectious and challenging. And it, too, fell by the wayside in 2012.
Why?
It could be laziness or a sense of diminishing returns. It could be that I got busy with other, more captivating, things. Or maybe it was merely the end of a natural life cycle. Hobbies, interests, even passions come and go.
I spend the bulk of my time crafting words. For a time, a long time, the challenge of crafting blog posts and tweets complemented my writing work. It was hugely entertaining, it made me some great friends, and it honed my skills. Ultimately, though, blogging and tweeting stopped complementing and started distracting. At first, the distraction was a welcome diversion. I was at a difficult juncture with my book; expressing myself pithily elsewhere served as a needed outlet and a reassuring relief. But eventually the distraction was only a distraction. It lost its enticing appeal, and I turned to different side dishes.
I rediscovered two former passions in 2012: baking bread and cooking. Like all good hobbies, neither of these can ever be entirely mastered. There's always something to improve on or something new to learn. They offer a constant challenge, and one that, unlike blogging and Twitter, is not verbal. You decide what you want to create, assemble ingredients, apply techniques, and - presto! - you very shortly have what you wanted and it's a tangible thing. This may be a metaphor for novel-writing, but it's the antithesis of writing an actual novel - and not only because you get to eat your results.
It's been cold and cloudier than usual in Las Vegas this winter, and the clouds make for gorgeous sunsets. As I was uploading photos of a recent beauty to my computer, it occurred to me that a sunset is a worthy and enjoyable phenomenon whether or not it precedes a sunny dawn. I may blog or tweet regularly again; I may not. For now, here's the sunset:
In what must have been a fit of inspired creativity, the holiday decorators at the Palazzo came up with utter brilliance. The bedecked papier-mâché bears were good, the snaky branch, flower, ornament and light thing was super-cool (if a little reminiscent of one of Lord Voldemort's scarier incarnations), but the ornamental pool filled to the brim with cranberries was pure genius.
(Click on the picture to get a better idea of the full force of a profusion of cranberries.)
I can just imagine the corporate meeting at which this design was pitched. Purchasing: We're going to need a cranberry guy. Number-Crunchers: How do you measure ROI on a gazillion cranberries? Idea People (all but the one who came up with the idea): I wish, wish, wish I'd thought of that! And the Suits: Top this, Steve Wynn!
Actually, in the context of the Strip's fanciest over-the-top hotel/casino/shopping/dining/entertainment extravaganzas, the whole concept of business meetings in conference rooms is hilarious. In what other corporate setting could cranberry-related agenda items nestle comfortably and sensibly right alongside occupancy rates, profit margins, Impressionist art exhibits, and the latest in uniform concepts for leggy cocktail waitresses?
We've had visitors here for the last few days and on Saturday, a perfect day for being outside in the desert sun without roasting (as are most October days), our guests decided they wanted to see some Vegas glories of the natural versus man-made variety. Not being either shoppers or out-of-towners who are obliged to clog up the Strip on weekends in order to see it at all, we were delighted (and a bit relieved) by this choice. Our definition of hospitality includes letting guests decide on plans, then chauffeuring them, keeping them company, and otherwise doing what we can to make sure they have a wonderful time. This policy occasionally leads us down dubious paths activity-wise, but not this time.
Valley of Fire, Nevada's oldest state park, is within an hour of Las Vegas. Its name comes from its eye-popping red sandstone formations. These fantastical shapes and sinuous layers were created 150 million years ago by enormous shifting sand dunes, then sculpted by both the uplifting and faulting of the entire region (which occurred in pulses from about 80 million years ago until about 35 million years ago) and by erosion, geology's most dogged player. The park also features layers of limestone, shale and other gorgeous and geologically fascinating rocks, chipmunks as bold as game-show hosts, lizards, jackrabbits, coyote, birds, and the usual array of desert plants.
It's amazing how distinct and colorful these plants now appear to us. When we first moved here, our eyes accustomed to the splashy colors of Midwestern foliage, all the desert flora looked similarly scrubby and more or less beige. Familiarity has transformed subtle beauty into vivid beauty, as splashy in its own way as the rich rainbow of humid climate colors or the gaudiness of the Strip. Here as elsewhere, I guess, perspective is everything.
The desert in summer has a beauty, but it is a subtle beauty. Part of its appeal is its essential featurelessness. But for the occasional sprinklings of Joshua trees and other close-to-the-ground dun-colored scrub, the desert is nothing but sand, the many-colored but utterly barren mountain ridges that ring the horizon in every direction, sky of a singularly deep blue, and the hot, clear, brilliant sun. The vistas are huge and panoramic; they don't merely dwarf their constituent parts, they swallow them up. Las Vegas, which admittedly has fantastical elements that would make it unlikely in any setting, seems altogether chimerical within two minutes after it disappears from the rearview mirror.
Between Las Vegas and the northeast Nevada-Arizona border (pat yourself on the back if you knew that a corner of Arizona pokes up between Nevada and Utah), there is almost nothing but limitless desert. But for the road, it's probably looked the same for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of years. Well, the road and Mesquite, Nevada, a tacky, hopeful Las Vegas wanna-be. In the summer as it shimmers in the heat, Mesquite seems particularly well named - it looks to be possible to grill a steak on virtually every rooftop, roadway and other sun-scorched surface.
The little spit of Arizona changes everything. Suddenly, the road winds and climbs and the mountains close in. The sun is just as intense, the mountains just as orange and craggy, but the perspective is now primarily vertical rather than horizontal. It is a fitting introduction to Utah, one of the most extravagantly beautiful places on earth.
The diversity of Utah's topography is astonishing; it offers everything from arid desert to dense alpine forests to verdant pastures thousands of feet in the air to fantasy lands of iron-rich sandstone and pearly limestone. Its five national parks - more, I believe, than in any other state - span a tiny band right at the top of the quality spectrum, from the eye-popping splendor of Zion and Arches to the out-of-this-world glory of Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Canyonlands.
Interstate 15, which starts in Los Angeles and goes north, by way of Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, all the way to the Canadian border, was well placed. It occupies the only ugly and boring cylinder of space in Utah. We leave it behind at the first opportunity and wend our way to Bryce Canyon via one of the many scenic byways available to people not in a hurry.
Within the next hundred miles, we gain nearly 8000 feet of elevation and lose just over 40 degrees of temperature. Not too far after the summit at 9910 feet above sea level, Lake Navajo, in the picture above, perches placidly in the rich, dry 71-degree air.
Within 50 miles of Lake Navajo, we encounter the hoodoo-topped red rocks in the pictures below. This topographical diversity is all part of the Dixie National Forest, so named not out of geographical confusion, but because Mormons in the late 1800s sent some of their number to this part of southern Utah to grow cotton.
Our home for the night is Bryce Canyon Lodge, a historical landmark inside the park that was built by the Union Pacific Railroad early in the 20th century. We wander, somewhat breathlessly inasmuch as we are now at a lung-draining 8500 feet, surrounded by 6-million year old rock formations. The pink cliffs of the Wasatch formation date back to the Cenozoic Era, the time when mammals first appeared on earth.
More on all that tomorrow. For tonight, content after a dinner of salad and grilled red trout, we walk to the lip of the canyon and watch the sun set behind the alternating soft siltstone and hard limestone layers that millions of years of rain, ice and snow have eroded into fantastical pinnacles, walls, and arches. It is strange to think that sunsets were already old-hat billions of years before these ancient rocks existed.
OK, first of all, check out the sky in the next-day photos below. Nice, huh? To be fair, I do remember sunny skies immediately following snow in the Midwest too, but maybe not quite so brilliantly blue. My view has reappeared, the mountains are heavily blanketed in white, the rooftops slightly less so, and I can see the patches of snow shrinking in the sun before my very eyes. I imagine the humidity is higher than usual, although it feels cool and crisp. You wouldn't think someone who spent 50 years in the Midwest would be so thrilled by a snowstorm, but hey, context is everything and I like the unexpected.
I especially like the fallen snowman in the last picture below. For some inexplicable reason, people here love to use giant inflatable things as holiday decorations, and the irony of an inflated snowman face-down in actual snow is pretty great.
Click here for a news story about our rare event and, if you do, be sure to check out the picture of snow covering the sides and Sphinx of the Luxor.
Probably because of our urban roots, we tend to assume that interstate highways will be if not ugly, then certainly less than scenic. This assumption could not be more wrong where I70 is concerned. It's gorgeous in Colorado and gorgeous in Utah. We take it today from Moab to its terminus at I15. Along the first leg of the journey, I70 climbs to the top of the San Rafael Reef, gaining 1,000 feet of elevation and losing 50 million years of geologic time in about eight minutes. Because of erosion and the shape of the land on this anticline, the rocks at Black Dragon Valley are 50 million years older than the ones on the banks of the Green River. Black Dragon Valley's rocks are the oldest we see on the trip. They date from 250 million years ago, just before the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the planet. For unknown reasons, 95% of all species on earth were wiped out. Land and sea were virtually devoid of life; the Paleozoic era had ended and the Mesozoic had begun.
This makes us wonder just how many times this whole life experiment has occurred. Does it take approximately the same number of years each time to evolve from single-celled organisms to space travel? Or are some iterations faster or slower? Does every iteration exhaust some non-renewable resource along the way? Does it cause its own extinction or do external events - plate tectonics, geothermal events, ocean venting of hydrogen sulfide gas, meteors, supernovas, marauding aliens, what have you - typically bring down the curtain? How will the next iteration fuel its transportation if it arises sooner than the 700 million years it took Mom Nature (as our geology professor liked to call natural forces) to create the petroleum we've all but used up in the last couple centuries?
Fueled ourselves by these lofty questions, we drive on - and up. The elevation climbs to over 7200 feet and we reach Ghost Rock, the so-called Outlaw Country where Butch Cassidy and others hid out from the law. It's Navajo sandstone here: buff-colored, stark, spectacular and reminiscent of the zillions of Westerns filmed in this area.
I70 ends at I15, the road from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. We've driven this road before and thought it dull, but either the dull part is north of the junction with I70 or our geology-educated eyes are better able to appreciate its beauty. It has some extravagantly spectacular segments north of St. George in Utah, in the part of Arizona that sticks its neck up into what you expect will be the Utah-Nevada border, and south of Mesquite on the way to Las Vegas. In a spectacular example of engineering short-sightededness, I15 parallels the Las Vegas Strip and creates serious gapers' delays even on the rare occasions when there is no accident. (How did the road engineers miss the obstructive impact on their high speed highway of several blocks of the most eye-popping manmade scenery in the world?) We're so happy to see the Strip - the signal that we're 20 minutes from home after over 7,000 miles - that we don't object to having to crawl along for this stretch.
And then, suddenly, we're home, with our own sandstone and shale mountains out the windows to the west, our own glittering pool of blue water, our own furniture and art, our wonderful, wonderful shower. This has been an amazing trip, full of delights, the last and not least of which is the comfortable delight of being at home.
