Epic Survival by Matt Graham
Author:Matt Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Jesse and I traveled another fifty miles and reached Last Chance Canyon on June 5. We decided to make it our home for the next week to give us a reprieve from some of the ugliness we had encountered. The worst, which stuck with me, was when we had come upon a spot on an Indian reservation that was trashed. Inconsiderate campers had left bottles and plastic containers, as well as the coal remains from their campfires. We cleaned up the site as best we could.
Located just over the Arizona-Utah border, Last Chance Canyon is hot and dry and extremely remote. We managed to find a nice cotton-wood tree to shelter us from the sun. Water was an issue. The streams contained visible cow dung, as ranchers in the area allow their cows to wander the public land. We made the water potable by filtering it through some fine mesh I had brought for such emergency situations.
During our time there, I busied myself with projects in hopes of evoking Jesse’s interest. I carved rabbit sticks and made a cloak out of my blanket. Jesse, however, was content to do nothing. He went on a few walks to get a better view of the sunset. He did do some gathering of juniper berries and cooking, but I still felt as if he wasn’t attempting to forge a close connection with the land.
After leaving Last Chance Canyon and hiking across the Kaiparowits Plateau, we reached the Canyons of the Escalante. A year earlier, I had buried a stash of food in a large bucket for my trips through the canyon. I located the rock formation. We made digging sticks from a juniper bush and dug for the food.
The journey was in its final leg, and our differing goals for the trip finally came to a head. The following night over a fire, we aired our grievances. I told Jesse I didn’t feel he was making a true effort to learn the primitive skills I was teaching him.
He, in turn, explained that he didn’t embark on this journey as a student. He simply wanted to live away from the workaday world for six weeks and take in the environment. It was a simple, honest, and straightforward conversation that not only reestablished our friendship but also ended up becoming a building block for me as a teacher.
With our hopes more clearly defined and better understood, the final week of our trip was the best. We spent two days in Choprock Canyon, which offered both of us the reprieve we were seeking. One wall of the canyon had a huge mural of petroglyphs—tiny, detailed pictures carved into the rock depicting an ancient society. The area was filled with cattails and bulrush. The spring water from the creek was the purest of the trip.
We also established a new level of understanding. While sitting in camp, I heard a bird chirp far up in the tangled vines of a tree. I went to investigate. As I climbed up, a bird flew out of a nest.
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