The desert is scary. The dessert is delicious! Mmmmm… dessert.

Moab is a hotspot for extreme-sports types, I could tell I was getting close on the highway when a van full of professional mountain bikers drove past me and held up a sign that said “we fuck for money.” Oh bless your hearts extreme-teamers, what would the late 1990’s have been like without you? Do the dew!

So today I thought it would be a great idea to go for an eight mile hike in Canyonlands National Park. An eight mile hike in the desert in August, sounds swell, right? Believe it or not it was a horrific idea. First of all, instead of trails like us east coasters are accustomed to (i.e. little dirt roads in the woods that are easy to spot) the trails out here are imaginary little roads that are marked by small piles of rocks. Small piles of rocks?!? I’m in “Canyonland,” fer crissake everything looks like a pile of rocks. Needless to say, I wandered off the “trail” several times which is really scary when you’re hiking by yourself. Secondly, it was just too freakin’ hot outside for me to be wading through the sand and scaling boulders today. I got a little less than three miles out and then I decided to turn back rather than risk dying of heat exhaustion on mile 8. I ran into a couple of other hikers on my way back. They were like “We saw your footprints, are you not doing the whole loop?” I thought it was weird that they had been tracking my footprints, what am I, a jackrabbit? I said “No, I’m too hot, I decided to go back.” They were like “Well do you have enough water?” And I’m like “Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s 100 DEGREEES out here!” Frankly, I’m sick of all this talk about water here. If I’m hot because I’m climbing rocks in 100 degree weather, water is not going to do a damn thing about it unless I’m bathing in a giant, icy pool of it.

But I dis the desert too harshly. What I did see of Canyonlands today was very, very pretty. I saw amazing sheer rock cliffs and crazy gnarled trees and cute little cacti and adorable little bunnies and lizards (and no rattlesnakes). Plus the quiet that exists out here is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before, I think my ears are actually ringing on account of the lack of noise. Every time I burp I feel like it echoes for miles…

5:02 PM;

Like a drifter i was born to walk alone...