Tension Zone

Defined as an area where two ecological zones overlap and where species from both zones struggle to adapt to borderline conditions. Altitude is often a determinant. In Utah once, I'd gone for a hike north of Monticello, a set of buttes east of the road to Moab always caught my attention, they looked like islands with the water gone, and I had a couple of days. They looked close but were actually 10 miles away. Left a note to the BLM that the truck was mine and I was hiking over there (arrow) overnight. Light pack with a pad, space blanket, jerky, dried fruit and nuts, espresso powder (sugar packets and fake cream) and 50 feet of light climbing rope. I am not a climber, I was more of one then, but the last job in Telluride I fell twice, into my safety harness, and lost my taste for heights. But I was interested in getting on top of one of the buttes, a kind of first ascent, but really just to see what was there. I took as much water as I cared to carry, a fanny arrangement that carried four liters. My rattlesnake stick (even then a mop handle). Mid-morning I was already into a very solitary zone. Three hours and I was in amongst these strange formations, the tops of them were about the size of football fields and the sides were shear, between two and four hundred feet tall, some of them with little hog-backs that came down off their sides, a pale yellow sandstone. I could walk around one, looking closely, in an hour, and on the fourth or fifth one I found a crack. At grade, where it opened out, it was six feet wide, narrowing as it got higher, and it was partially filled with talus which would provide, maybe, a way up. A mixed talus, because of the confines, usually fines settle by weight, but climbable. Late afternoon, a slot like this doesn't get much light, but I pick a way to the top of the talus. Still thirty feet to the top but there are cracks and handholds. I remember thinking -what the hell, a good place to die- but it was a surprisingly easy climb as long as you didn't look down. The top of the butte, at first glance, seemed devoid of anything, polished stone. Established camp, heated water, made espresso, then explored until the light failed. Amazing, the way a small cleft might harbor enough sand for something to grow. In one basin there was a pinon pine that was maybe twenty inches high, maybe 250 years old. It's a brutal place. I camped lightly, no one would ever know I had been there. Where the Scioto flows into the Ohio is not a flood but a viscous flux, so much material being carried downstream, the very color is different, what the feeder streams drain. The marks of where water once was are marked on the wall, it's a fact, there they are, like Aunts at a wedding, Did I mention your brother? I've always coveted your sister. I know it is a sin. Still.