Scared in Zion
There's a time when it's completely acceptable for a grown man to lay crying in the fetal position.
When we pulled into the campsite, the sun had already set, but it was our securities that were about to.
My trusty friend, Dave, and I were on the back-side of Zion National Park in the middle of the Utah wilderness. Three hours prior, we agreed to put our lives on the line by canyoneering through a backcountry slot canyon.
I did not tell my mother.
Aron Rolston had recently (2003) cut off his arm from being trapped under a boulder while canyoneering. The remembrance of that made it tough to sign the waiver—effectively turning my life over if something happens to me—but we each did so.
We rolled into our campsite while it was very dark. Fortunately, we didn’t have to hike to set up camp. There was a small circle drive and on the outside perimeter, six or seven campsites. The ranger said we could pick whichever site we desired, for it was not full.
Our plan for the next day was to drive our car down to the end of the hike, and then hitch-hike up to the beginning of the hike, the one that would lead us to the canyon mouth. Preferably, we could find someone else doing the hike at our campsite and carpool with them before and after. A good plan. So, before getting some much needed rest, I decided to drive around to the various sites to check with the other park patrons to see if we could car-pool. Only, there weren’t any other park patrons at the first few sites. It looked like there wasn’t going to be any at all...until we noticed one occupied campsite.
I stopped my car and called out past David (seated in the passenger seat) to the man.
“Are you doing the Subway tomorrow?” I asked in a loud-enough voice for him to hear me.
“What?!” the beleaguered man yelled.
I got halfway through repeating myself when I realized how uncomfortable I felt.
I’ve never seen Deliverance, but I’ve heard it teaches you to be scared of people who live out in the woods. The five seconds from beginning to ask him the question and re-iterating it enabled me to take in my surroundings.
An old rusty pick-up served as the backdrop for a make-shift pop-up tent surrounded by 30 years of camping equipment strewn about his site. Normally, I would think this wonderful...frugal, even. But this man (of indiscernable age) chased that scenery with a look of disgust-meets-ambivalence...with a side of anger. It looked like anything might set him off.
"No," came his frustrated answer.
“Ok, thanks,” I quickly said, immediately regretting the decision to talk to him. I don't know why he was ambivalent or why he was angry. Why he appeared uptight and that anything might set him off...but I didn't care. We drove a few sites away and pulled into a lot that was the furthest away from the man’s, yet still close to the entryway. But David and I both knew that we’d see no one else tonight. And after talking to the grim man we were unnerved, and unsure if we’d ever see anyone else again.
I put the car in park, it’s lights shining on the rest of our empty site. David and I looked at each other. Looked back at the man’s site. Looked at our car lights shining on our empty site.
“There’s no way I’m getting out of this car,” David said.
“I want more than tent fabric between me and that guy tonight,” said I. “I have no problem sleeping in the car.”
“Better than out there.”
Seats reclined, we tried to sleep. 30 minutes worrying that I’d open my eyes and see the old man standing at my window didn’t stop me from drifting off into an eventual-sleep. When we awoke, just after daybreak, I poked David in the arm.
“We made it,” I consoled.
“Let’s get out of here,” he responded.
We made it to drop our car off and then hitched to the trailhead. The hike was unbelievable, and I wouldn't trade that experience, which ended up being pretty relaxed. Who’d have thought the camping would have been scarier than the canyoneering?
Now, is it possible that we were just over-reacting a little? The previous night, we thought a mountain lion was pawing at our tent in the Bryce Canyon National Park backcountry...only to find (when I finally worked up the nerve to unzip the tent to check) that it was the backcountry permit that I'd previously tied to the corner of the tent.
Maybe we were just two young men, scared of what we didn't know. Maybe that man just needed someone to talk to. Maybe he was irritated by us disrupting his privacy.
It causes me to really ask what my motivations are in the things I do, and how I'm looking at things from other people's perspectives. I want to be better at this.
What were that man's thoughts? We'll probably never know. But one thing we do know...we made it through that night; and for now, I'm quite all right with that.
