No car but ours, a sliver of road that shimmers, crunches, tosses
dust plumes, a smoke screen behind us. We disappear
into the plateau’s horizon, the high desert plain.
Views of the La Sal Range slathered in snow, pale green
pinyon, stunted juniper soften the view of red cliffs ahead.
My husband and I, lovers of open spaces are we.
“Tower Arch Trail,” the ranger had advised, scrutinizing
our well-worn Tilly hats and seventy-two-year-old faces.
“Few tourists make the drive, take the climb.”
We hoist packs to our backs, adjust poles and hats, the trailhead
empty of cars, Utah’s morning a threat to pale complexions.
Hiking in isolation makes me shiver.
Gentle switchbacks, easy at first, then sheer rocks ahead.
One toehold then another, not within reach. He disappears
from view, me waiting on the ledge.
With no pack, no poles he’s back, pledging to pull us both up, over
the ridge. Strong, gnarly fingers grip mine, sweat trickles, poles
dangle, clanging into rocks.
Standing atop, shaky and parched I look down, down, down.
So high, we meander, smooth rock underfoot, a shelf in the sky. Sandstone
fins, giant soldiers marching across sliprock, arches weathered and worn.
Cacti’s fuchsia and yellow blossoms bloom in the dunes, the air, alive.
Finally, the prize: Tower Arch, 100 million years in the making
spanning ninety feet, a palace entrance, a proscenium
for dinosaurs, a cinnamon-colored work of art.
We linger in a patch of shade,
gifted with intimacy on the trail.
We don’t speak of it.
There is no need.
Janet Banks is a Boston-based writer whose personal essays and poems have been published by Bluestem Magazine, Cognoscenti, Poetry and Places, The Rumpus, Entropy Magazine, Silver Birch Press, Persimmon Tree, Poetry and Covid, a project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council as well as other online sites. Shortly after retiring from a corporate career, she was published in The Harvard Business Review. The essay was reprinted in HBR’s Summer 2020 Special Issue: “How to Lead in a Time of Crisis.” She is currently developing a collection of poems about aging, the concept of time and the need to create a future when you are old.
