I fell in love recently.

Not with a person, but a place. Bears Ears National Monument, to be exact.

I laid my running shoes next to my pillow, and wadded my socks in anticipation of what was sure to be a gorgeous morning run through Indian Creek, a small part of the expansive Bears Ears National Monument.

Unlike in the mountains where morning comes slowly as light drips slowly over ridges and peaks, daytime explodes as brilliant sun fills the canyons of Bears Ears in what feels like an instant. Despite lack of sleep, the warming rays woke me in my sleeping bag and I pulled on my shoes for a morning run through the sage and scrub.

The daylight revealed a landscape that had been obscured by darkness the night before. I took off down a long dirt road that skirted the boulder fields just below the towering, red sandstone cliffs that I hadn’t seen in the dark. The day’s first rays warmed the fragrant sage, filling the cooler morning air with an subtle, herbal smell.

I followed the road around a bend in the wide canyon, and soon found myself far away from camp. The desert has a way with messing with your sense of scale - it’s gigantic rocky features dwarf you and can trick you into thinking they’re closer than they really are. I thought I was halfway to one of Indian Creek’s distinctive features, the South Six Shooter, a redrock monolith that rises thousands of feet above the desert floor, but the striking desert tower never felt any closer. I felt humbled and small as I ran through the desert.

Infamous desert rat Ed Abbey penned a similar sentiment in his classic memoir of life in the desert, noticing “the power of the odd and unexpected to startle the sense and surprise the mind out of their ruts of habit, to compel us into a reawakened awareness of the wonderful - that which is full of wonder.”

Bears Ears did just that, not just for my running, which it reinvigorated with spectacular desert views and seemingly endless red sand roads to explore on foot, but it made me see the world around me as if new. Much like falling in love with a person, the desert renewed my interest in passion for everything around me. The world appeared brighter, fuller, more passionate. It shook me up inside with it’s seductive and enigmatic vistas. The desert is never what you expect. It revels in contrast, juxtaposition, and the alien. It delights in all that is strange, hostile, and inhuman. It defies perception, expectation, and personification.

The land that Abbey and I both fell for was nuanced. A landscape bred in juxtaposition, born from contradiction. Subtle and surprising, homey and inhospitable. Desolate, yet abundant, and wholly unexpected. If there was anything that I should have learned from Abbey’s writing, it was to approach with wide eyes and an open mind. Orient yourself to the strange and embrace the inhuman. Revel in all that is alien and bizarre about a landscape that has supported and rejected many attempts at civilization.

 

And just like the way we will sometimes come to resemble our lovers, the desert painted my skin a darker patina that almost matched the brownish-red of the sand. The dry air and wind crinkled my eyes and gave me laugh lines. I was head over heels.