On ravens' wings

From Robert Service's Call of the Wild:

...
Have you swept the visioned valley
with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence?
Then for God’s sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.
...

This post isn't really about food, but it's about the reason I'm telling this story.

Whenever I leave Moab, I can't help but wonder why the hell I'm leaving. I've had the fortune of visiting Moab twice in the past two weeks. Last weekend I went with my sister and high school friends for a weekend camping trip, and the week before I spent five days canoeing on the Green River with family and friends.

Canoe trips are one of the weeks I look forward to the entire year. The day after I get home from the trip might be the worst day of the year. It is a week of spectacular views, ultimate relaxation, and a reminder of my place in this world.



This is seriously what it's like for five days.

On the river, watching a raven soar along the canyon walls in Still Water Canyon, I can't help but feel small and insignificant. I can't help but think "No matter what we do, this world will be ok. The beauty will survive, whatever we throw at it. Someday we will all be gone, and this place will still be here, still be beautiful, still be alive."

It is the most humbling week of my year to float through the time of millions of years. Hiking over fossils frozen in the Honaker Trail from when an ocean covered present day Utah forces me to think about the epochs that have passed, and those that will, with indifference to my existence. It reminds me that my wants and desires are fleeting, that I am a part of something larger.

And yet. I am still a part of this world. I still have a role to play. I am still connected.

I am connected to the cryptobiotic soil that holds the desert soil against the powers of erosion that be. I am connected to the lizards that scamper along the layers of rock. I am connected to the ravens that soar along the cliffs, teaching their young to fly. I am connected to the water, always flowing towards the dam, patiently moving each grain of sand from one sand bar to the next, ever carving the canyon a few centimeters deeper.

Somehow, I can feel that my life is connected to the desert's. I can feel the life in me revive during the rain. I can feel the struggle against the heat during the middle of the day. I can feel weight of the wind and water, pushing me on, inevitably, down river.

Somewhere throughout my years I have lost something in the jungle of concrete, the constant buzzing of electric outlets, and the stress of a schedule. And each year I return to the vast desert and string my soul to the flow of the river, the red of the cliff walls, the grit of the sand, the call of the Canyon Wren, and the wings of the ravens.

My challenge now is to bring that lesson home and live with it throughout the year.