The glint of morning tiredness is just working its way out of my eyes. I’m already scrolling around on my phone looking at hikes around me in Moab. Nearby offerings of outdoor adventure are abundant in this central location between Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. My friend Max spontaneously agrees to join me on the morning excursion.
We pull up into the trailhead and I instantly have a feeling that we’ve made a properly-excellent decision. The openness of the landscape provides us with instant views of the surrounding area as soon as we park the car. Looking across the valley, I see miles and miles of rolling, rounded stone formations, like a giant spine running through the landscape.
“Chase said that’s a major spot people go off-roading in the lifted Jeeps we saw the other day,” Max says to me as we both gaze in astonishment at the humpbacked rocks.
The lifted Jeeps for rent around here are mega. We’re talking tires three times the size as normal on axles that extend out multiple feet from the body. True Mad Max territory. From an outdoorsman standpoint, they aren’t my favorite. They’re loud, damage the landscape, and fill the air with the smell of gas. However, I can’t deny the fact that I wouldn’t be able to stop smiling if I was speeding through this Mars-esque landscape on one. Sometimes fun supersedes rational.
The whole ride over I’ve been trying to talk Max into running this trail with me. He’s not going for the idea. I give up this fight a little easier than normal due to the fact that the only shoes he brought to Utah with him are Chaco sandals and a pair of dress shoes. He tells me to go ahead and run it ahead of him, and he starts pulling out his earbuds to hike alone. Not happening, I tell him. We haven’t seen each other since college. As much as I’d like to torture myself on this climb and run until my lung feels close to exploding, I know the right thing to do, what I honestly would rather do, is hike with an old friend and catch up. There is no arena for a conversation that is better than a walk through the outdoors. It frees up memories and feelings in the mind that just don’t get unlocked elsewhere.
The climb ahead of us is around six-hundred-feet up a rocky, gravel-crusted ascent. The desert sun is already strong, even this early in the morning. Thankfully, people out west had enough sense to build hiking trails with switchbacks, so the journey up is far more pleasant than the straight-up-no-mercy hiking trails I’m accustomed to on the east coast.
Step, step, step, push, push, push. Moving rhythmically, we’re powering up the climb at a good pace. My watch indicates that my heart rate is well into the one-sixties, quite high for hiking. Maybe it is a good thing Max saved me from a run. I try to quiet my oxygen-hungry-breaths.
We arrive at the crest of the mountain and the landscape opens up into a flat plateau. The magic of the field we have just entered settles onto me like my favorite sweatshirt. Ahead, our dirt hiking path cuts down the center of a flat meadow that is a few hundred feet wide, splitting the two sides in half like a zipper. To our left, a cliff face shoots a couple hundred feet into the sky; the predominantly red rock is sacred with black imperfections. It towers over us blocking out a good portion of the sky like a storm cloud. Off to the right, rocky hills roll away a few miles into the distance until they reach larger mountains.
“Jurassic Park,” Max says confidently, turning his head back-and-forth to take in the landscape. .
I instantly understand the way he feels. “This is definitely where the dinosaurs come to play,” I nod in agreement. “So this is why they call it Hidden Valley. I get it now.” We’ve stumbled upon something unbelievable.
We keep walking. I make a few jokes about finding the pond of ranch dressing. Max says it would be better to have a river off it. They pull the Hidden Valley supply from underground wells right below us, we agree laughing and smiling as the sun shines down on our faces.
We walk a few more minutes, see a hilltop about half a mile ahead, and agree to make that our final destination for the day. Max has to get back to go to the airport, and I’ve got plans to go whitewater rafting soon. Tough day.
Our conversation transitions to more serious topics: goals for the future, love lost and found, and redefining ourselves post-college. All of the classic reality-checks most of us in our mid-twenties are dealt. There’s a sense of comfort talking about these things in a landscape as beautiful as this. It’s like the mountains, sky, and open sagebrush fields are so full of life, so perfectly placed that none of our human problems are large enough to actually hurt us.
Max reaches the hilltop just moments before me. “You can’t be serious. This view is actually incred…”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I cut him off, eyeing the miles and miles of baby blue sky, parched-green grass, burnt-red rock, and white snow capped mountain peaks all interwoven like a homemade blanket laid out in front of us.
