Places

When I drove from Moab, taking Highway 70 west, it was through more rocky country.  It wasn't until after I turned south on Highway 89 that I began to realize what I had been missing for days:  green.  The valley from Panguitch to Kanab was lush with the color, with fat cattle grazing, small farms, trim houses and little villages.  It was a slice of home. 

After the performance at Kanab, it was time to explore.  I drove into Zion National Park, one of the big ones.  My plan was to take the shuttle for a tour.  With my sore leg, that was the only option. To do so I had to drive all the way through the park east to west.  I was impressed with the towering canyon walls.  A little chipmunk scurried across the road in front of me.  Did my car seem a giant to him, or was it puny considering his home?  And I was I puny considering the rock?  And was the rock puny considering the size of earth, and up through the universe, galaxies and space in general?  I suppose everything is relative. 

I got all the way through the canyon to find the shuttle parking lot full.  I finally found a space in the picnic area, but realized I would have to walk too far to get to the shuttle.  Besides, if the parking area was full, what were my chances of even getting on the shuttle?

Again, too many tourists.  One can take photos of the canyons, but one has to shoot above the RVs.

I sat at the only free picnic table to eat an apple and pore over the maps and brochures, figuring out my next move, when a Taiwanese family joined me. We chatted about the usual, where we'd come from, where we were going.  One of the sons dismissed Wisconsin out of hand:  no China town, he said.  Ah, said I, but we're getting a Chinese restaurant in Seymour.  We talked about Nanching, where I had taught English, and I admitted it was even hotter there than in Utah.  They asked if I had a knife.  I did and the papa used it to carve up some oriental melons he had found in an Asian store and shared two pieces with me.

They left and two lizards and a squirrel joined me.  I conversed with them for a while but kept my distance.  A similar lizard once crawled up my pantsleg in a California desert.  When we tried to pull him out, his tail came off.  I finally had to drop my pants in full sight of cars passing by on a highway to get the little guy out.  I didn't want to do that in Zion!

I decided to leave the hordes of tourists (I am a bad little tourist, remember) and drove out of the park heading west when I spotted it:  "Virgin Goods"!  Not that I was in the market, but I had to see what that was.  It was a used book store.  I popped in to see if there was a copy of Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams, and there was, but it was a signed copy, out of my price range.  Lee Ballard, the owner, took time for a long chat.  Virgin is the name of the town, named for the Virgin River, and I have no idea what that was named for.  She also runs the adjacent post office which is how she makes a living.  The rare book store is more an obsession.  I asked her if she was the lone liberal in a sea of conservatives and she said yes.  I told her I have often been in the same boat but it's one way to stand out in a crowd.

I don't know about the touristy stuff, but I always meet interesting people.

And so I drove north, winding up in Beaver City for the night.  Another deluge, another motel.  How many nights does it have to rain?