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Volume CXXXIII, Number 11 |
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BOC Notebook: Wild spring break found west
KAZIA JANKOWSKI
CONTRIBUTOR
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| Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. (Courtesy of Kazia Jankowski) |
"Physically, the West could only be itself. Its scale, its colors, its landforms, its plants and animals tell a traveler what country he is in, and a native that he is at home."-Wallace Stegner
I'd have to agree with Stegner, which is probably not a bad idea, considering that he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, but also because he is simply right. There is something about the West that, when you incorporate all its features, forms a landscape that just makes you gasp.
At least, that's how it is for me every time I go home to Denver and drive west down Colfax Ave. I look up at the mountains, whose height and color juxtapose the dry, flatness of Denver, and I think to myself, "Damn!" It is a sensation that you have to feel. It is what Professor Corish would call a poetic moment or Gary, my yoga instructor, would say is yoga-a moment of union-and simply cannot be comprehended without experience.
Knowing that, the Outing Club has decided to offer a spring break trip to Canyonlands National Park outside of Moab, Utah. On its official website, the park says that it "preserves a colorful landscape of sedimentary sandstones eroded into countless canyons, mesas and buttes by the Colorado River and its tributaries."
Not a bad description, but it does not do the park full justice. It doesn't explain why the first time I went there, I told my parents that I would be getting married there (it doesn't matter that I didn't, and still don't, have anyone to marry) or why we went back my senior year of high school or why I have officially declared Utah to be the most beautiful state of the fifty. Those are the feelings that you are going to get from experiencing it.
So here's the plan to make your wondering a reality. The BOC trip will leave from Salt Lake City Sunday, March 14, the first week of break. We'll take a shuttle to Moab, spend the night there, and then we'll have five days and four nights in Canyonlands, and then one more sure-to-be wild night in Moab.
We'll walk by (but not on) crypobiotic soil -living, black, knobby soil that covers much of the park and is made of cyanobacteria, lichens, mosses, green algae, microfungi and bacteria; we'll sleep in three different canyons; and we'll be able to wear shorts!
The trip cost is $245 plus airfare, and all participants must confirm their interest by Wednesday, December 10 by emailing Jeff Tillinghast (jtilling) or me (kjankows). There will be a lottery Wednesday night if there are more people interested than available spots.
If, in the meantime you are looking for more immediate entertainment, the Warren Miller movie Journey is showing this Sunday at 8:00 p.m., Pickard Theater. You pay $5, and they make you feel like a badass, potential Olympic skier. That always gets me fired up, even if it means skiing on Sunday River's man-made snow! Besides, it has good study break, first date, old friend reunion potential. Just go. You can get your tickets at the Smith Union Info Desk, which is where I'm headed right now. I just got so excited!
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