Monday
I walked alone from Moab’s community garden to the grocery store. I took the urban trail into town. A mule deer chomped on some summertime kale. Mill Creek babbled next to the winding asphalt. Yard signs had changed from “Throttle Down in Town” to “We Support Silence,” but off-road vehicles still sputtered through the streets where I had last walked in winter five years ago with my ex-wife L.
I had taken time off from my police job to fly from Orlando to Denver for the weekend of my youngest cousin’s wedding. She got married at the same age as L. had said she didn’t want to be married to me anymore. I wondered if we had married too young or too ignorant of ourselves or just fools in that kind of adventurous love.
In Denver, my aunt who married my cousin also had married L. and me in Orlando. She read the same vows that she had read to us. We had said you shall not walk alone, but then I was by myself in Moab for the week to visit my friend R. He worked up in Salt Lake but let me stay at his Moab house before he planned to come down at the end of the week. Until then, I walked over the past in the present.
In Moab, L. and I used to take walks together motivating each other to enjoy the outdoors even in the winter despite the cold. We knew we would see a raven cartwheeling or someone biking or the hunkered stillness of everything between the snowy canyons. We knew we would talk about what L. wanted to paint, what I wanted to write; what we were reading and watching.
L. had taken a photo of us on the urban trail. The cottonwoods stood strong, but bare. L. wore her yellow scarf and I wore my green hat. The cliffs as red as our noses. Our smiles were as big as our puffy jackets.
We were concerned about where we would go after my nearly complete year contract at the educational nonprofit and L.’s part-time job there. But we were together out there, sometimes taking off our mittens just to hold bare hands for a moment. We would return back to our trailer for hot showers, hot chocolate, hot sex—a nest of safe warmth.
At the grocery store by myself, I gave L.’s phone number to a checkout clerk. I remembered an older clerk who had been fed up with some tourist and smashed the shopper’s grapes while bagging them. L.’s number didn’t go through for the store’s shopping rewards. L. used to recall that older clerk had smashed cherries. I gave my phone number to my patient clerk and it worked. On the walk back to R.’s house, I wondered if it mattered to the anecdote if the fruit was seedless or had a pit.
Tuesday
I walked with E. from Sand Flats to Mill Creek. The burnt sandstone cooled down to a riparian zone of dusty green next to the water. I plucked a stem of sage, rubbed it between my fingertips, and lifted the crushed leaves to my nose. I inhaled the sweet smell while E. told me about being in love with a river captain.
The captain worked at the same nonprofit where I had met E. who had worked as an outdoor educator. The captain was adventurous and caring, cool and considerate. I was so happy for E. I had known E. with another guy; a guy as wrong for her as I knew some of my Moab friends thought L. had been wrong for me.
I had thought of E.’s other guy as an ugly, frat guy—a bragger and a gym rat, but not cool and also pudgy. I thought of E. as one of the most outgoing women. She laughed and cried from her face to her shoulders. If she was glad you could see it beam across her. If she was sad you could see it drape across her. It was like you could see her soul illuminated.
E. and I hiked down to the creek. We flopped our sandals from the bank and splashed into the down-streaming water, walking and talking. There are only so many adult topics to talk about other than love and work. And so E. asked me about my new job as a cop, since she knew I wasn’t seeing anybody.
I told E. about how I worked in an area rife with domestic violence where L. had first moved after she left. It seemed like such a low bar to not hit another person, but I knew you could hurt someone without using your hands. Then, E. asked me if I saw or heard from L.
Once, I saw L. drive by me on a street but she hadn’t seen me. I hadn’t heard her voice in years. I said we had only texted. I thought of L.—my wife who I had woken up to every day and had dinner with every night for thousands of days and nights—had just become a woman who I hardly heard from other than some family matters, a second move, and a new job.
E. and I hiked down to the confluence of the two hands of the creek. The last time I was there was with L. and we had hiked the combined creek upstream to the split. I had heard of a pictograph of a phoenix rising on a rock, which I hadn’t seen with L. I asked for E. to show me it. E. led me to an opening between willow boughs that limped in the heat. On a slab, now patina-darkened over with time, someone had chiseled out the mythical bird rising.
Wednesday
I walked the urban trail along the creek downtown for lunch to a bakery that E. had recommended. I followed the shadows of the cottonwoods. I cut through the dappled sunlight. The grey asphalt darkened to black and then my path lightened to the white concrete of State Route 191, which ran between the red cliffs and through the middle of Moab.
At the bakery, I bought a rueben on rye. I sat with my back to the ovens. The seat across from me was empty. As I ate my heaping sandwich, I thought about the last time I bought a loaf of bread. I couldn’t remember. I just didn’t eat enough bread by myself.
Daily, L. used to make egg sandwiches on toasted sourdough. The greasy fried protein oozed on top of the tangy tough gluten. The sourdough always made with a starter from the last batch. The eggs’ yolk nearly as orange as the southwestern sun.
After lunch, I walked to our old trailer park a few blocks from downtown. The front lot by the mailboxes stood empty. The rest of the ten or so trailers looked vacant. I expected to see a former neighbor or the tinkering landlord. Instead, I saw a sign affixed on every one of the remaining trailers and the corner house: No Trespassing.
I felt like someone had restricted me from excavating an archeological site of my life. When we were married, I used to lovingly call L. “booty.” Then, L. had broken our vows, plundered my heart, and abandoned me. After our divorce, I took that word and buried it like cursed treasure.
I returned to R.’s house past the middle school where I saw a sign that read Police Training. When I told an EMS worker there that I was a cop, she said they were doing active shooter scenarios. I told her my training was to run toward danger, to fight, and never quit.
I recalled my police department’s oath that I would always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. But before I swore that, I had not fought the fight of my life. When L. had said she didn’t want to be married anymore and when she cowardly asked me if I knew what that meant, I quit.
Thursday
I walked Grandstaff Canyon before dawn with S. and her black dog Luna. S. used to work in the office at the outdoor educational nonprofit. Now, she worked for a public land agency. We had an hour to go from the empty parking lot to Morning Glory Arch and return so S. could get back into town.
Luna ran ahead of us on the sandstone ledge down to some reeds next to a flowing creek. She squatted and marked the way. I took each step behind S. on the cutout stairway to the sandy trail.
S. asked me what I was reading. The morning almost felt like when S. and I used to carpool while talking about books. Later, L. would drive to the nonprofit. I knew I wouldn’t see, let alone hear from, L. later that day. But S. and I could talk about books again.
I told S. about a novel called Crazy Sorrow about a couple who meet during the bicentennial in New York City and fall in and out of love until 9/11. For twenty-five years, through school and careers and travel and marriages to other people, they keep coming back to each other. They build up their lives separately and then serendipitously get together again until life terribly comes crashing down. All that remains is the rubble to search for someone who won’t be found again.
Luna splashed into the creek’s crossing. I stepped across rocks that S. balanced on first. Then, we hiked up to nearly the end of the trail, where sandstone slabs stacked to an overlook of Morning Glory Arch. The arch actually was a bridge where water ran underneath a wall of rock for long enough that it bored out a hole.
S. asked me when I had last contacted L. It seemed like as long ago as when the bridge was a wall, but also it seemed like a bridge that would eventually break. L. had let me know her grandmother had died and while I had wanted to go to the funeral, I also knew I wasn’t welcome, and so I sent a wreath of orchids that looked like morning glories.
A shroud of gray clouds covered the sky above Grandstaff Canyon as S. and I reached the overlook of Morning Glory Arch. I didn’t need to go to the end of the trail to see the water seep under the rock, whittling it out more. We turned around and walked back.
Friday
R. parked at the trailhead of Mary Jane Canyon. His spotted brown-and-white dog Loretta tried to jump out of the front seat when I opened my passenger door. I closed it behind me and looked up at the clear sky. The sun shone brilliantly white and had burned off the clouds, making it look as azure as L.’s eyes.
Loretta lead R. and me to the sandy start of the trail. We each carried a bottle of water and wore hats, polyester shirts, shorts, and sandals. We didn’t have much to talk about since we had been catching up since R. arrived the night before and the walk along Mary Jane Canyon would be a recharge from just sitting and chatting.
I had told R. that the last time I hiked Mary Jane was the first time I had hiked it along with L. We had heard about the creekside trail through the canyon that lead to a waterfall from the guides at the nonprofit. After work we drove from Moab out along the Colorado River to the trail head. L. and I had the same gear that R. and I had except also an energy bar and headlamps.
Loretta stopped to sit in the middle of the creek. R. and I took off our shirts and soaked them in the water. I picked up a piece of cobble and rubbed it with my thumb like a worry stone. R. and I. were walking that sort of walk where you’re putting in each step purposefully into the landscape and you glance around it and also feel it all: the sand and water and sun. The friction and sogginess and burn will come later, but you continue to go onward.
A few people had walked out of the canyon as L. and I walked in at sunset. We meandered in and out of the creek. L. followed me into the canyon, setting her sandals on a wet stone, and slipped. She fell sideways in the water. She was O.K., but her zip-off pants got wet to her thigh. I suggested she take them off and just walk in her underwear. I loved her when she unbuttoned, shimmed, and then slung her pants over her shoulder.
We continued to walk quietly in the canyon. Our quiet was not the large quiet that we knew later as L.’s reservoir of resentment at me for us living out there or my damming anger at her non-verbal communication of it all. Our quiet was the small quiet of acceptance like the light slowly ebbing into darkness.
Loretta stopped before the rumble of the waterfall. R. led and I followed him around the corner to where a boulder stuck in the canyon’s slot creating a waterfall into a pool. I remembered when L. and I had made it to the end of Mary Jane Canyon and we realized night had fallen and we were only half-way done with the hike. With R., I took my worry stone and flung it upstream on the creek to the waterfall. L. and I had eaten our energy bars, flicked on our headlamps, held hands, and then walked back together. The worry stone skipped on the surface making rippled rings that overlapped and then disappeared.
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