Go East To Find Sun

John Day Fossil Beds NM

First I should mention the rain, which in Portland wouldn't merit a sentence. But we were not in Portland we were east in the desert, sun country- John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Only there was no sun, well briefly on the first day, but that’s not really worth a longer mention. But for the most part we spent the trip dodging  bullets of rain- significant, impossibly, wet, punctuated showers that heightened our sense of experience.

It was a blessing of sorts.

On the first morning I (we) slept in...

blissfully unaware of the possibility of the creek rising near the dispersed campsite we were staying at. As I lay there, drifting through a scattering of timpani slumbers, slowly thoughts of slot canyons, flash flood warnings, and all sorts of other safety flotsam and jetsam rose to the surface of my mind and I soon began to calculate how fast I could pack up my gear and leave. In my head I would be like John Wayne herding

cattle through the storm, epic, big, muddy, and super sexy.  Except I am not John Wayne. I am bald, without a drawl, and I don’t think there would be anything romantic about a dripping tent that would inspire a dramatic, sweeping, boom of a soundtrack, much less the smell of hundreds of wet cattle being driven through mud and poop. Yeah.

There would be shivering.

That much I could guarantee. I motivated faster than I expected and with careful flips and twists to the fold of the fabric, I kept the tent and my stuff mostly dry. I was impressed, years of being grilled by my friend on how to, why we, and when to paid off. Then I realized I was by myself in this effort. My camping cohorts had yet to rise.  Dammit. I was ready to tackle the day. Make breakfast. Or do something. Anything but sit here in the consistent anti-dramatic rain. So I drew circles of ink in the passenger seat of the car and became 

intimate with the sage. Never truly 

noticing before how the leaves stick up from the twisted branches at 90 degree angles, like miniature telsa coils- an exercise in patience, meditation, and boredom. My droid did not get any service. So the multi-tasking crack of my life had been taken away, brutally.

Later after an awkward cup of coffee and sausage platter cooked at one of the viewpoints we hiked the boardwalks of the different formations.  

We were lucky. 

If it rained the painted hills changed to darker, richer colors as the clay soaked up the water, in some cases causing the rivers to run the green of the minerals in the soil. The sky, instead of being a mediocre blue, congressed in piles of storm clouds enhancing the sagebrush twist with a spice of haunt and eerie that gave permission to become aware of the gone-already-has-been-age the permeates the place. John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is host to several different beds, quarry’s, and assemblages of fossils from various epochs

in the past. At the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center visitors can walk through these different periods of time and see the reconstructed creatures like bear dogs or nimvarids and browse the multitude of fossils. It also provides a reprieve from the sun or for us, from the rain.

But.

I am a cloud watcher. 

I went outside anyway.

In the sun/ rain I could watch the storm pass over the features and shadow their colorful crevices or illuminate their grassier lowlands. While the place feels old, which might be because we are instructed to feel that way, or as humans we have an innate sense of the deep time, either way, watching the rain move through gave me a glimpse at the constant force of destruction. I was not interested in the rebirth cycle, not here, but

more in how the land wrinkled under the direction of the clouds. How it revealed under the direction of those clouds. How the wind ushered those clouds and time with it through. It’s difficult not to reflect on time or where we stand in the midst of the time’s storm. But it’s not what I am trying to say. Perhaps the rain is a catalyst to understanding. Perhaps  it’s because in the sun we move through this land so purposely, while in the rain our discomfort forces us to slow down and look, experience, run, hide, comment, frustrate, feel?

So- a blessing of sorts. 

Not the trip any of us expected.

Go east to find sun, we were told.

Hmphh.