Utah, Matt nailed you. You are an adult playground.
We had talked about making your acquaintance far before we ever laid eyes on you. Back in Austin and over Christmas and during the planning and preparation of this trip ...we lusted after you, firm.
I was pleased by your jurassic stature. I am an ant in your land, a morsel drop in your garden of rock. Your mere size humbles me. I am in awe.
These days I try to remind the self we are fleeting, decaying, slipping into the dawn of the next day faster than we can blink. I take this cognition and am glad, thankful. It keeps me present. It allows honesty. I can accept the beauty that is among me.
Moab, we camp by your Colorado River, under the stars and the canyons of your great city. We find a quaint coffee shop for our mornings, the Corona arch for viewing, Canyonland for the taking.
Then we headed west, further and further west we run, to Monument Valley, to Lone Rock Beach, to Zion.
Oh, Zion! How you lure me! You exist as your own, as a piece of Eden peaking on Earth. We marched your Narrows with pantless (and purpling legs) and we laughed, like madmen laughed! as we were so alive in your river, your water.
To the healing properties of water - my brother and I have whispered about them for many years, written rough draft screenplays on its subject, played countless tracks in hopes we could obtain the same healing we know exists in water properties. And yet. And here, at the Narrows, standing in a body of water 1,873 miles from the body of water I grew up in, I felt it too. Again. And again. With each step it seeped deeper into my toes and up my blood flow.
For you, your mythical and mindful water properties, I send my gratitude to you, always.
And to Lone Rock, we thank you. For existing as a free place to lay our tired eyes under your constellations that I've never seen so clear. To sit still and in the presence of each other in the moonlight. To breathe deep.
We head on to Slab City, to Salvation Mountain, to the place that changed everything for me. Everything. I exist because of this place, this man, this expression of love.
Headed West,
Kristen