Sailing Tarka: Reaping What We Sow : Part I

From Indian Creek, Utah we headed south to meet the Arizona border. We made Page, AZ by nightfall. Page is notable for being on the southern coast of Lake Powell and is also home to Glenn Canyon. We hastily made our way to the banks of Lake Powell just in time to watch the sunset paint the surrounding rockscape in pastel colors which glowed against the dimming backdrop of the sky. The canyons that have been flooded by the Glen dam to form Lake Powell would certainly be a magnificent destination to scuba dive or snorkel. A unique environment of contrasts would be found by the underwater exploration of the long-forgotten and once arid floor below. The previous summits of now submerged cliffs would act as a diving board in which the adventurous could begin a journey into the unknown depths below as an endless gallery of geological artwork is vertically traversed.

The next morning we were eager to keep pushing west to Las Vegas. Our progress took us through Zion National Park. We spent a night in Zion and the following day hiking up the infamous "Subway" canyon feature. Winter temperatures were forecasted in the coming days and so our time in Zion was grossly inadequate to take advantage of all that could be done there. We swore to go back and do some proper canyoneering when we would rappel, hike, and swim through world class slot canyons that have been carved through the eons by the curious meanderings of creeks and tributaries trying to find their way through the mountainous sandstone desertscape.

The next evening we were in Las Vegas, eager to reorganize our lives using the lessons learned from the first 4000 miles of traveling. We have since been in Las Vegas for two weeks and have many stories to relay.

However, I'm not going to relay these stories. After all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Just kidding. But I want to take this opportunity to record some thoughts and recollections of how Juliet and I found ourselves in our current state of affairs for those who are interested.

+++

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a galaxy called Duluth, MN...

Both Juliet and I needed to complete an internship in order to cast off the shackles of college. A couple years earlier, I had completed my first internship by living and working at the Dorothy Day House which was a community house meant to provide limited housing for the otherwise homeless. A very long story short, I met some incredible people who were living an alternative lifestyle (I'm talking about the workers specifically, not the homeless). Each person came from a very different background and there was an equal amount of diversity in the reasons that brought them to the house. I continued to live at the Dorothy Day house for the better part of two years as I finished college with the perk of living and eating for free.

Juliet, an outdoor recreation major, had found herself completing her internship through a dog sledding outfit. She lived on forty acres that shared a boundary with a lake. Her home was a 12' x 12' cabin powered by a single extension cord and without running water nestled in an old growth cedar forest. Between completing school assignments for her internship, Juliet was responsible for the well-being of fifty Alaskan huskies. Moreover, Juliet would lead dog sledding tours on the weekends as well as help train teams of dogs for various races.

During this time, both Juliet and I were working part time jobs. Juliet worked at the local rock climbing gym and I did web design as well as mental health work with adolescents at a hospital. The prospect of dog sledding was too exciting to pass up and so I began helping with chores on occasion. The winter came and went quickly and before we knew it, summer was on our hands.

We both managed to finish school and thence came the assault of "the question." Do I really have to spell it out? "What are you going to do now that you are done with college." As obnoxious as this question is to be asked, when you are young and broke and have just filled your brain's grey matter with worthless knowledge for the price of a new Mercedes Benz, I think it has always been meant as a joke. Established adults know very well that we have been in school our entire lives. Now that we didn't have academic obligations I felt like Morgan Freeman in the Shashank Redemption as he is let out of prison after serving a sizable sentence. The world appears foreign and you haven't found your place in it. You don't know what else is out there.

So that question remained unanswered but Juliet and I have always liked everything outdoors- swimming, sailing, biking, climbing, hiking, camping, and kayaking. But having been so busy with school, internships, and jobs, we didn't feel like we were able to do these things as often as we had hoped and we weren't getting any younger.

We began to dream of going on a trip. A long trip where we could find out who we were, what was around us, what our true passions in life were, and maybe start to figure out the question of what we wanted to do next. The details were really rather unimportant as we knew we could just figure it out on the way. The big challenge, of course, was being able to finance such a trip.

to be continued...