1 of 3
Photo by Kyle Whitecotton
Students backpacking in Utah
2 of 3
Photo by Kyle Whitecotton
Students backpacking in Utah
3 of 3
Photo by Kyle Whitecotton
Students backpacking in Utah
The idea was simple: Gather a small group of adventurous college students and see what happens when we combine an English course with an Outdoor Studies course. I would teach college composition while my longtime friend and colleague, Sally Cirincione, would teach canyon orientation. After months of brainstorming curriculum models, writing official proposals, and convincing our deans that this crazy idea could actually work, Sally, eight students, and I were finally standing on the outskirts of Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park with our backpacks loaded up for a week-long backcountry adventure.
For the past two months, we had been in the classroom, reading and discussing Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” while exploring the complexities of the rhetorical situation and practicing the writing process again and again. We also practiced route-finding skills, studied topographic maps of the canyon country, talked about risk management, and reviewed the principles of Leave No Trace. By the time spring break arrived, we were all itching to get out of the classroom and on the trail. Not only would this week of backpacking be a major part of the students’ final grade and a culmination of the skills they had learned, it would also be a lesson in the value of nature and time in the outdoors.
After spending much of the first day driving up from Moab and acquiring the necessary permit from the ranger station, we finally set out on the 22-mile Spring Canyon Trail. From the parking lot at the upper end of the trail, we followed the old Holt Draw Road for more than a mile until it ended near Sulphur Creek. This easy, flat walk got our blood pumping and our legs warmed up just in time for a wet spring snowfall to commence. Suddenly, the reality of our endeavor set in. We wouldn’t see our cars again for five days. We were walking away from toilet facilities, running water, microwave ovens, and coffee makers.
The route we would be following was not an official, maintained trail, and the regular influences of weather, flash floods, and the all-too-common rock fall make for ever-changing route conditions. What’s more, none of us had ever been to Capitol Reef, so the canyon presented raw adventure at every turn; still, with a topographic map in hand, each student would have to take the lead and match contour lines on paper to the rugged terrain that surrounded us. Free of GPS and cell phones, they would navigate their own piece of wilderness.
As the snow continued to fall, it mixed with the canyon dirt. The ground underfoot turned to a soft, slippery mud that the students referred to as peanut butter. We walked for another two miles through the peanut butter of the creek bed to the base of the red Wingate cliffs towering directly over us. From there, it was an unremitting climb through jagged red rock and juniper country, followed by a steep scramble leading to a large, muddy bench overlooking the wash — our first camp.
The sun dropped fast behind the cliffs, and the temperature plummeted. Light from eleven headlamps danced amid junipers as the students split off with their designated “cook groups” to pitch tents and prep dinner. Although we were too exhausted to appreciate it at the time, this would become our beloved evening ritual set to the soft roar of backcountry stoves, the warm scent of dinner on the cold night air, and the buzz of students swapping stories and reliving the adventures of the day.
Spring mornings in canyon country are typically chilly, but that first morning was frigid. The muddy ground had frozen overnight, so breaking camp was easy and jovial. Mornings offered another sort of ritual ushered in by the slow rising of the sun, the smell of instant coffee, and the anticipation of the trail ahead.
Spirits were high as we hiked east around two prominent points in the Wingate cliff. As we rounded the second point, we saw two deep clefts cutting down through the Wingate wall at the top of a talus slope ahead — a treacherous section of the trail known as “the W.” From the bed of Sulphur Creek to the W is 1 mile, but the trail up and over is near vertical and layered with ample snow and peanut butter mud that would usher in our most challenging day of hiking. It was a series of what came to be known as problem-solving opportunities and teachable moments that would quickly bring us closer together.
After clearing the W, we followed a steep gully down into Spring Canyon where the journey took us east through less treacherous terrain. We left the snow, mud, and bad weather behind and spent the remainder of the journey in a land of mammoth cliff walls and jagged boulders the size of small houses.
In addition to the daily task of collecting and disinfecting water from the occasional pothole, the students were expected to complete various assignments on the trail. Over the next few days, the students took turns teaching lessons based on research they had done back on campus. While we walked, we learned about things like cryptobiotic soil, flashfloods, and various canyon country flora and fauna. The students were also required to keep a backcountry journal and encouraged to write each night before turning in. Perhaps the most significant of these assignments was the much-anticipated solo.
On the final evening, after setting up camp beneath enormous cottonwoods crowded in an alcove on the north side of the canyon, Sally and I led each student to their own little section of wilderness where they would sit alone and write for an undisclosed amount of time. What followed was an astonishing series of heartfelt revelations that each student voluntarily shared with the group while back at camp.
Whether it was extreme exhaustion from long days of hiking, the extended break from technology and civilization, the inevitable camaraderie of shared experience in the wild, or some combination of all three, that week in Utah’s canyon country profoundly changed each of us in different ways. But there was nothing unique about us in that sense. The truth is, everyone can benefit from time spent in the outdoors.
In the backcountry, everything is intensified. Like some mathematical equation, this intensity flourishes exponentially relative to the amount of time one spends there. Sounds become more discernable so that the cascading song of a canyon wren is as beautiful as any symphony. Colors, whether in those immense swathes of canyon walls or in the frayed ribbons of juniper bark, become vivid mosaics one would expect in an art museum. Even the most civilized of actions like brushing your teeth or washing your hands are experienced anew in the outdoors. Factor in the complete relinquishment of technology, and this intensity can be quite jarring. The simple warmth of a sunrise on a frosty morning is reason to dance and sing, while an uninterrupted canopy of midnight stars bids you to linger a moment longer before bedtime. There’s simply nothing like it.
The next morning, we set out early toward the junction of Chimney Rock Canyon 2 miles away. From there, we walked another 3 miles to the parking lot and returned to civilization. Before digging my car keys out of my pack, I turned back and said goodbye to the canyon.