It was supposed to be an easy day. My friend Noelle and I were driving from a small canyon campsite in western Colorado to a dispersed campsite in Western Utah– about a 6 hour drive, but expected to be relatively peaceful after the last week of lightning storms, wildfires, and flash floods we’d run into driving up from Texas. The plan was to leave early, make a couple quick stops to explore and make the driving easier, and arrive at our camp in the late afternoon.
This plan got derailed before noon. We had been driving for maybe an hour when we drove past Dillon’s Pinnacles– a fantastic geological feature in which cliff walls had been worn away, but the caprock layer at the top protected the layers underneath, resulting in towering spires of volcanic rock that date back to when Colorado was an ocean and dinosaurs roamed the earth. Walking among them gave me an immense feeling of timelessness, as though with each layer we passed we were somehow stepping into something directly reminiscent of those times, and all of human history could pass and these pinnacles would still remain in some form or another.
We got back to the car after noon and continued driving west. About an hour into Utah, we realized we would be driving by Moab, and quickly amended our plans to spend the remainder of the day exploring the park. By the time we arrived, it was around 4 PM, the weather was hot, and the haze from the Colorado fires tinted the sky red as the sun sunk to the skyline.
This was the first and only time I have been to Moab, so I don’t know how crowded it usually is, but during the pandemic the park was nearly not quite empty. Perhaps it was for this reason- or perhaps it is simply the nature of places like this- that the contrast between the towering walls and arches, the red dirt and scrub of the desert, and the shiny black asphalt and clean yellow lines of the road that cut obtusely though the landscape seemed to converge in such a way that it all seemed surreal. It seemed like such a symbol of our age that I could come to this place, without any real strain, and look at these magnificent structures that are the result of 75 million years of time and nature, and say “wow, that’s cool” and leave. Where the pinnacles made me feel eternity, this landscape felt something akin to waving mortality in your face and imbuing you with the knowledge that appreciation really means nothing.
This feeling gave me a distinct sense of *something* that lasted the rest of the night. We stayed in Moab long enough to watch a vibrant pink sun set over the jagged outline of the Utah skyline, and then got back on the road, determined to make our planned destination that night.
In retrospect, it may have been wise to find a closer place to camp, even if it meant digging into funds we didn’t want to spend, but instead we decided to drive the four remaining hours to Fish Lake National Forest. By the time we got back on the road, the sun had set completely, and we were winding through land we had never seen, pushing the 80 mile an hour speed limit, blasting music and asking deep questions to keep out the dark. Along the way we stopped briefly at a pull off on the side of the highway to stretch our legs and wake up a little, a little on edge because the only other occupant appeared to be an abandoned semi-truck.
On one edge of the parking lot was an information sign that informed us that we were parked on a cliff, and that below the cliff was a massive canyon. All we could see in front of us was darkness, until the land fell away and the sky continued, so full of stars that if you starred at it long enough every black empty space would fill with light. The truck at the other end of the lot kept us alert to our surroundings, and not wanting to linger too long, we got back in the car and drove onward, westward into the abyss.
The dark continued on like this, until what may have been flat land as far as the eye could see, or rolling hills, or tall rocky cliffs, or deep canyons cracking the earth gave way to forest, and we began to see little movements on the road, tiny creatures scurrying across it, and along it. The further we drove into the forest the more we saw of what we believed to be mice scurrying through our headlights.
Around midnight the map indicated we turn off onto a road that led us further into the forest. We drove upward into the dark, the extent of our world what the headlights could touch. Eventually the mice disappeared, and the trees on the side of the road turned into bushes, which turned into grasses, which turned back into trees. We continued to wind upwards, until the paved road turned to gravel, and a sign warning road erosion for the next 50 feet let onto a narrow one lane that consisted of all that was left of the road. The gravel continued until we reached a sign for a dispersed camping area. It wasn’t the one we had planned to stay at, so for no reason other than we were very clearly invested in sticking to this plan, we continued up further to the camping area we had planned to stay at. We drove around the whole thing, trying to be as quiet as possible, looking for a good place to pitch our tent but most of the obvious sites were already filled. Since we couldn’t really see anything, we just ended up parking next to a patch of trees, and pitching the tent very close to the car.
We cleaned up a little, and stared up at the brilliant lights of the night sky, before settling down in the tent. The night was quiet, except for a light breeze rustling the trees above us. Not five minutes after I had begun to drift off, I heard what sounded like footsteps circling the tent. They stopped for a few minutes, and then returned. I nudged Noelle; she had heard the footsteps too. We sat up, and called out hello a few times. The footsteps stopped. We tried to go back to sleep. A few minutes later they started up again, circling. They were short and light, and sounded almost like a person- albeit a very nimble one. We called out hello again. My friend announced that we had mace. I decided to look outside the tent- mace in hand. I fumbled with the zippers and poked my head out. Nothing. I shone my light into the trees, and the clearing next to the car. Nothing. We tried to settle back to sleep, but the footsteps came back again, circling, and we decided we needed to get out of there. We left the tent, took our sleeping bags, hoped in the car, and drove away as quickly as possible. On the intersection with the main road the headlights shone on cows grazing in a meadow. One looked right at us. I have a ranking system for ideal locations to be a cow. I would say that haunted forest cow is probably 5th on the list.
We drove around for a bit, deciding what to do. Noelle was in favor of spending the night in the car and going back in the morning to get the tent, but I thought that since we would have to go back in the morning anyways to get the tent, we might as well get it now. Retrospectively, I don’t really know why we thought that was the better option, but that is what we did. We sped back into the campsite- it appeared as empty and quiet as it had been when we left- and packed up the tent as quickly as possible by disassembling the poles without separating them from the tent, and shoving the structureless tent and everything in it into the trunk. We jumped in the car and sped off again.
By this point it was probably 1:30 in the morning, and we decided we would just drive to the first campsite we passed and sleep in the car. We parked in what looked to be a field where we could see a few R.V’s, and covered all of the windows with blankets and towels, put my still inflated sleeping pad in the front window and tried to fall back asleep. The backseats were full of stuff, so Noelle slept in the passenger’s seat and I slept in the driver’s seat. She fell asleep almost immediately, but I was still on edge, and not particularly comfortable. The slightest rustle outside shook me wide wake, and I kept thinking about the footsteps, and how we hadn’t heard any breathing, and imagining that there was someone standing outside the car. Nevertheless, I could see the night sky through the glass of the sunroof, and eventually drifted off into some semblance of sleep.
We awoke early in the morning to the sounds of birds chirping, and sunlight streaming in through the spaces that weren’t covered up. Outside was a beautiful meadow, green and yellow with early morning light, a few aspen trees swaying gently in the light breeze. Without getting out of the car, we drove back down the road a little to an empty parking lot with a bathroom. On the way we saw small groups of cows and calf’s grazing on the sunny hillside, and on the edges of pale aspen forests. As we made our way back across the eroded bit of road, one of them looked at us in the way cows do, and stood in the rubble, just grazing.
