Continental Drifter

Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Harris.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 04/22/2015

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Contents

Continental Drifter

Odyssey

My (Burnt) Left Arm

Red Rock Fever

The Road To Perdition

Death Valley Daze

Out Of The Darkness (Tséyi)

In Amazement: Under The Spell Of The Painted Desert

Making An Impact

Hell Hath No Fury: Zion National Park And The Valley Of Fire

Fire Dreams: The Wisdom in the Wild

References

With gratitude to the Creator,

and to all the brave men and women who have loved

and preserved, and continue to love and preserve

the natural wonders of the American West.

Continental Drifter

HAVE YOU EVER REALLY LOOKED at the landscapes of the Southwest? The deserts, mountains, rivers and sky? The cacti, mesas, buttes, and sand? Something in the miraculous nature of the red rocks of the Southwest has found its way into my cells, saturating my thoughts and permeating my dreams, stirring the longing for union with the eternal that lives in us all.

I was never what you’d call a Nature Girl. An Ohio upbringing taught me a healthy dislike of mosquitoes and humidity. Ten years in New York City only added fuel to the flame. It wasn’t until my last few years in Los Angeles that I was struck with inexplicable wanderlust. I was flying back to L.A. from Ohio when, from the window of the plane, I noticed the changing topography of the continent as we moved west. From the flat, green farmland patches of Ohio to the brown plains of Kansas, the Rocky Mountains began suddenly around Colorado and from them sprang the Colorado Plateau, a thick, elevated, geographical province named for the Colorado river, stretching outward from the Four Corners of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. Located almost entirely in Utah, the Plateau is 130,000 square miles of red rock sandstone comprising 300 million years of geologic history.

The pilot made an announcement: If you’re seated on the right side of the plane, for the next few minutes you can see the Grand Canyon. Years of travel back and forth across the United States have since taught me which side of the plane to sit on for a Canyon view, but that day, it was a happy accident. Within seconds, folks from the other side of the plane were cramming themselves into any available seats on my side. A woman with big, blonde Texas hair crawled over the man in the aisle seat and plopped down next to me, bobbing and weaving her very large head at my shoulder. When we hit California, the mountains turned blue and purple; clouds floated above, etched like figures in a fairy tale, plucked from a child’s story book.

I got the fever in earnest in 2001 when I was suddenly compelled to see the Giant Sequoias in the Sierra Mountains of Central California. Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park is located at the top of one of those mountains, seventeen miles up a winding, two-lane canyon road. At the highest point, elevation is about 7,000 feet. My fear of heights told me I couldn’t make it. But I did, and the reward was the knowing that fear is never a good enough excuse not to do what the soul demands.

A few weeks later, I was called to the Grand Canyon. I say called because something was burgeoning within me that I could not yet identify. At the time, it felt like compulsion, but it didn’t matter. I made the only choice I could: I went. The Grand Canyon is, without question, the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, not that I’ve seen all that much in all my years on this earth, but I cannot imagine anything more spectacular, revelatory or profound. It is a mark of the ages, a doorway to the history not only of mankind but of the planet; an ancient, ever-changing testament to time and the transient nature of our physical lives. That visit reminded me of who I truly am: a part of something bigger, more relevant and more powerful than I could ever have imagined.

Travel of course, requires patience—the planning stage alone can be daunting. But travel can also teach patience. I used to think it was a trick, something I had to talk myself into. Lately I think of it not as a thing, but as a conscious act involving trust that the timing, the money, and all the elements involved in any effort will fall into place. When I am able to open doors in my head so often closed by reason and allow myself to nurture possibility, the muscle of intuition grows stronger, leading my body and mind where they believed, rationally, they could not go. In those moments of trust, of surrender, the veil of things as they are becomes less opaque, more like a scrim through which I am given glimpses of the source of my true power. Patience arrives like an unexpected but welcome visitor and my vision of the world and my place in it becomes clear. Time then ceases to be linear, no longer measured by numbers on a calendar or by physical changes, but by the knowledge and experience I have acquired by listening to what is within.

Patience comes to me sporadically, episodically, and oftentimes must be coaxed to extend its stay, for even though I was called next to Monument Valley, it would be three years before I was finally able to get there. The longing to see God’s earth had taken root in me and grown like ivy, weaving a path in and out of my conscious and unconscious mind, guiding me to the place I would go next. My trips left me forever changed and it was clearly time for another shift. A stretch of Navajo tribal land straddling Utah and Arizona, Monument Valley looks like what might be left had God taken a giant mallet to a mesa and hammered away. The huge sandstone monoliths stand like the Pyramids of Egypt in a red desert, except that they were made by God, not by man. This land is sacred not only to the Navajo, but to anyone with an innate sense of his own divinity and an acquaintance with the promise of eternal life.

It looks like I’m Hop Scotching my way east. I can’t say yet what’s next, but a call will no doubt be made and I’ll answer. Surely, we like to think things happen for a reason, perhaps because it helps life make sense. But each time I venture into unknown territory, I find treasure beyond what I could ever have hoped for.

July 2005

Odyssey

IN THE MIDDLE OF JUNE 2001, I started to feel an obsessive desire to see the Giant Sequoias of Central California. The best of them are only a four-hour drive from Los Angeles, and while I was never a lover of trees or nature in general, I was suddenly compelled to see them. I didn’t understand the urgency I felt. But, there were a lot of things I didn’t understand and on the scale of things, one more wasn’t much.

It was an impromptu decision for one who had never taken a lone road trip. On July 4th weekend, I rented a car and after a restless night’s sleep, drove to Exeter, California, a town nearby—all the motels close to Sequoia National Park were booked—checked into the motel, and set out to familiarize myself with the lay of the land: distance from the actual Park, where the trees were and how long it would take to get there. I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to walk among the world’s largest living things out of a misguided sense of laissez-faire.

I dumped my bag at the motel and drove the twenty-five miles to the Park. I arrived at 6:00, bought a weekly pass, and asked the Park Ranger, So where are the trees?

He smiled as he stepped out of the booth at the Park entrance, and with a gaze upward—the back of his head nearly perpendicular to his spine—pointed to a boulder and said You see that rock up there? Beyond that rock.

I stepped out of the car and followed his gaze. Not a fan of heights, the prospect of climbing that hill was daunting.

As though reading my mind: Don’t worry, he assured me. It’s worth it. Giant Forest, as it is called, is seventeen miles up a mountain, and the only way to get there is the narrow, twisting, two-lane road to the top.

Right. Thanks. My legs were shaking as I got back into the car, wondering if it was best to tackle it then, or make it back to the motel before dark. The gas gauge said I had a quarter of a tank left. It was worth a try.

A warning sign just beyond the ranger station indicated a speed limit of ten miles per hour. I pressed my foot on the accelerator and negotiated the first half moon curve in the road, but each turn of the wheel, no matter how methodical or slow, was like grasping a rung on a ladder. By the end of the sixth curve, my stomach was churning. The view to the drop below was beginning to make me sick. A caravan of cars had gathered behind me. Drivers going 40 miles an hour sped by every time I pulled into a turnoff to let them pass. My uncertainty and the threat of a dwindling gas supply convinced me it was in my best interest to turn around. I felt like I’d been at it forever, but I’d only gone eight miles up and would have to double that the next day.

It was nearly sunset by the time I made it back to town. The golden light of late afternoon was in full surrender to the blush of early evening, the pale blue sky turning slowly to rich, star-holed indigo. Exeter’s main thoroughfare had three motels, a restaurant, convenience store and a couple of gas stations. Bungalows and double-wide trailer homes were scattered on small lots along the street, making a picture postcard scene of a short stop on a long road. With any luck, I’d see some cowboys mosey into town for a gunfight. I filled the tank at the convenience store, gathered a bag of trail mix, an apple and bottled water, and found myself back at the motel in about a minute and a half. There’s something to be said for a motel room all to one’s self. No sharing of the bathroom. No ‘lights out’ when the other party was ready for bed. And there was cable TV. I flipped the channels and watched about four episodes of Law and Order. In a little while, I was tired, and slept.

The next day I woke late, refreshed after a good night’s sleep. I dressed in khaki shorts and t-shirt—it was surprisingly hot—and, armed with an iron will, headed back to the Park to tackle the mountain again. It took about thirty-five minutes to get from the Park entrance to the top of the mountain, but as the ranger had said, it was worth it.

I was greeted at the entrance to the grove by two giant Sequoias on either side of the road. I felt a low flutter in my chest and slowed the car to a crawl I had never seen nature in such glorious repose; never seen any living thing so big. The Park literature handed to me the day before said some of the trees were as tall as a twenty-five-story building and thick enough to cover two lanes of traffic. I parked in a lot a short distance away and made my way to a paved walking path. From there I was able to venture closer to the trees, actually making contact with the Forest floor. Air temperature on the mountain was almost 20 degrees cooler than down below, the ground soft and spongy underfoot. Halos of light spilled gently through the high branches, illuminating the treetops and a hiking path of fallen nettles that wound through and among the trees. The trail seemed to go on for miles, but I lingered with the sentient giants, talking to them, listening to them, touching the ones I was allowed to touch and respecting the boundaries of the ones I wasn’t. Time ceased its incessant demands and we stood together, the trees and I, no longer separate from each other, but timeless creations, both, sharing our knowledge of the touch of God. My breath came slowly, from deep within, for my encounter with these enduring beauties had calmed my restless heart. The trip down the mountain much easier than the trip up. I pondered what I might have missed had I not made the decision to get to the top, and promised myself never to allow fear to stand in the way of my doing anything.

Fast Forward. I had a mammogram on August 3rd of that year which showed something unusual in both breasts. I was advised to have a second mammogram and an ultrasound. I went back on the 17th and after two hours of smashing my breasts in their machines and rolling their magic wands over me, all they could tell me was that what was in the right breast was a cyst and nothing to worry about, but in the left, was an unusual density of tissue.

The radiologist pointed to the image on the lighted display and said haltingly, I think you’ll be all right. But then again, cancer can look like that, too.

What?

She offered timidly, Would you like to talk to your doctor about it?

That would be nice, yes. Duh.

My gynecologist referred me to an oncological surgeon, a nine-year-old (looking) knife-happy little guy who was eager to get in there and see what it was. He closed my file with a confident toss, and sat back in his chair, twisting a pen in his hand.

I’ll bet you’d be twisting your mustache if you were old enough to grow one.

Eighty percent of these biopsies turn out to be nothing at all, but it’s best to be on the safe side and go in and have a look. He loved cancer. Cancer was his friend.

Will this be a needle biopsy?

"No. Surgical. We’ll make