My alarm began buzzing at 5am. I sat up and saw a yellow, nearly full moon setting to the West. It was a chilly, dark morning in the desert. I woke up Feldmann, who was sleeping next to me, and the other eight hikers in our group, who we had only known for the last 16 hours or so as we drove across the Colorado Plateau together for a weekend in the desert. We all piled in the car and drove out into the darkness to find Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park.
I had woken up early to witness the sunrise through Mesa Arch many times before and knew the routine. We gathered in the trailhead parking lot, I grabbed my camera bag, and we began the short walk out to the Arch. There were dozens of photographers already lined up and waiting for the sun to come up. The earliest probably got there at least an hour before. A Saturday in early-March with a good weather forecast, it was bound to be busy.
I chuckled to myself as I found a perfectly good spot to shoot next to the army of photographers and checked the time, 6:30am—only 15 minutes before sunrise. All of the others, with their massive ten-pound tripods and Canons and Nikons, shooting timelapses and hundreds of versions of the same photo through the Arch, got here hours before us. I knew a tripod definitely wasn’t necessary, and the shot through the Arch is honestly pretty hard to get right unless the sunrise is perfect or you’re willing to over-edit in post-processing. Nevertheless, the sun rose and its light was exactly what all of us photographers were looking for. The other hikers and I watched in awe and silence, embracing the warmth of the desert sun.
As I sat on a wall of sandstone, with nothing before me but sweeping cliffs, buttes, and canyons-within-canyons, I reminisced on all the trips I’ve led to the desert in the last three years for the CU Hiking Club and all the great friends I’ve made and people I’ve met. I’ve certainly learned a lot.
We made oatmeal for breakfast and were on the trail by 10:30am. On the agenda for the day was Syncline Loop, a roughly 11-mile trail in and around the Upheaval Dome in Island in the Sky. Feldmann and I had never done it and we were excited to be on a new trail (to us) in the Moab area. It often seems like there’s only a few big hikes left in southeastern Utah that we haven’t done.
During our hike, I got to know the others in the group and pointed out landmarks, named a few sedimentary layers and answered lots of questions about the desert. Nothing unusual for a Hiking Club trip to Moab. Nearing the end of the hike, we were all pretty tired from our lack of sleep and everyone was mostly quiet. The sun’s harsher light had faded and the desert was quiet and pastel. The rocks, cross-bedded with ancient sand dunes, preserved wind directions and stories of rivers and oceans from the past. As we walked around, in and out of canyons, my mind once again began drifting back to past trips to the desert, and I couldn’t help but smile.
My first trip to the desert with the Hiking Club was in February 2017, I was a freshman. I knew so little. Since then I’ve led trips to Arches, the districts of Canyonlands, Bears Ears, Goblin Valley, the San Rafael Swell, Capitol Reef, and even the Grand Canyon. I’ve led day hikes, weekend and week-long backpacking trips. Each has given me life-long friends, each gave me a book of memories, and each taught me a few things about myself.
People change. Landscapes don’t. At least from a human perspective. I’ve seen the sun poke out from under Mesa Arch and illuminate a vastness of canyons out from underneath it multiple times. The person within me who first witnessed it is surely different than the person who watched the sun warm the cracked desert earth a few days ago. While the sun will surely rise and Mesa Arch will surely glow and the photographers will surely line up behind the Arch every morning, our lives are constantly changing and I am constantly changing.
Recently, I’ve realized that time isn’t linear. My time as a kid, in college, and with the Hiking Club went so fast. I’m now a senior, about to graduate, and nearly ready take the plunge into the canyons of adulthood. In May I will be leaving Colorado to move to another state. I will be away from home for real for the first time. I’ll really be on my own. I’ll miss the adventures and the chaos and the unbridled joy that Hiking Club trips to the desert have brought me. I’ll miss my friends. But this new chapter of my life is coming and cannot be stopped. My life is calling, and I must go.