Leave Only footprints, take only memories.
Don’t take your schist for granite.
A favorite joke of river runners in the Grand Canyon. The canyon is layered with multiple types of rock starting with the Vishnu Complex which is schist, gneiss and granite. As I traveled to Onion Creek, my favorites hike of the trip, I thought about how old these canyon walls are and how many people have felt their mystical powers.
Onion Creek is a quick four mile round trip hike in a slot canyon nestled within the Moab area. The recommendation came from an amazing outdoor adventurist blogger I stumbled across that specializes in off leash dog trails in Utah - girlonahike.com. Alicia writes about the best trails in the surrounding areas, gives accurate and detailed information on what to expect on each hike including difficulty of the trail, exact directions to the trailhead, if your pup can be off leash, and if flash-flooding is an issue.
I headed 20 miles east on highway 128 with the Colorado river flowing on my left and the tall red rocks on my right until I came to the Onion Creek marker. The highway turned to a narrow and rough dirt road, curving around the canyon and down into the creek. The RAV4 was a trooper as it cruised through the the creek bed with ease and never missed a beat on the rocky turns. I still longed for my old Jeep however. Between the go-anywhere-four-wheel-drive and the top-down openness of the wrangler, I always felt a sense of power and freedom. It is definitely a Jeep thing!
I found the unmarked trailhead and parked the car off to the side of the quiet and isolated roadway. Aside from the older couple in the dune buggy that blazed past us, there wasn’t a soul in the area. We had the entire creek, canyon and red rock path to ourselves. We tumbled down the 15 feet to the creek bed and headed east through the narrows of the canyon. The pups splashed in the water, ran like the wind, and I swear they were smiling.
The canyon walls curved around me in different shades of reds and pinks and loomed overhead for hundreds of feet. The creek was low enough to walk through and occasionally I joined the doggos in the splash celebration. I was thankful for my new grippy and fabulously light-weight hiking boots from Hoka One One (pronounced oh-nay oh-nay and meaning fly over the earth in the Māori launguage of the indigenous people of New Zealand). With each turn, the path was breathtaking and I stopped multiple times to absorb the canyon’s healing power. I wasn’t flying over the earth but I felt free and balanced.
It occurred to me that I am a dreamer and an adventurist at heart and that my upbringing (read my mom and dad) turned me into the overly responsible and pragmatic person that I am. It is no wonder I always thought of myself as boring. I was torn between being a fun-loving and adventurous romancer and making my family proud with my high achieving career and practical lifestyle. As I started to explore this realization, I thought more about my immediate future. I wanted to immerse myself in a freer lifestyle and unleash the creativity that was hidden deep inside me. I wanted to stay in Moab for a few months to explore my thoughts, adventure through canyons and find the light hearted, spunky, idealistic girl that got lost in the corporate world.
I opened up to the universe and asked for guidance in love, healing and life direction. I expressed my deepest desires and trusted that my life path will unfold with new adventure, a sense of belonging and warm tenderness. I asked that the universe to also heal someone very special to me. That he find forgiveness in himself and the strength to get through the overwhelming challenges set before him. And I told the universe, with a smile, that I won’t take my schist for granite.
