There was a lull in the middle of the afternoon, moments between a Hands Off Rally and an Easter dinner with my son, on this the Saturday before Earth Day. Easter is a big thing for Jake; Earth Day for me. 

First, his story: Years ago when living in a different group home he connected deeply with his primary caregiver who even on her Sunday’s off would come to take him to church. This beautiful Hispanic woman became a cross between a second mother, buddy and caregiver. It wasn’t long after his mother and my wife had died. She also made sure he was registered to attend a summer Christian camp within an hour’s drive of the group home.

Unfortunately, as happens with group homes, she eventually decided to move on. Yet her influence was so deep that years later church holidays and the camp continue to be his heartfelt necessities. He tolerates his father, who is more spiritual than religious. Where he finds peace within the folds of a saintly robe, mine come with nature. 

So on this Saturday afternoon with a window of time before our dinner, my thoughts, as spiritual as they were, was to head to nearby Sibley State Park where I might amble through the dense, hilly woodlands in search of some early spring blooms of Hepatica and other woodland fauna. With the ongoing political turmoil we’re facing my traipsing through the prairies and woodlands have suffered greatly of late along with my spirituality. Sometimes I return home with few if any images, and most with little artistic effort. And still with a cluttered mind. 

Before realizing it I had lost track of my bearings and was quite a ways north of the Sibley turnoff. Pulling off to the shoulder of US 9 to gather my thoughts, and to gauge a possible time frame, my decision was to head to the Lake Johanna Esker some 20 minutes deeper into the hills and woodlands of the moraine where a fine prairie “wilderness” awaited, if you can describe a grassland as such. This Nature Conservancy is home to perhaps the most prolific Prairie Smoke patches I’ve ever witnessed. Prairie Smoke and Pussytoes, one a brilliant pink, the other offering a gleaming contrast of white.

Although mid-April meant I’d likely miss both, it was worth a look. After arriving I sat for several moments to gaze at the distant esker, a tall narrow glacial stream bed towering over the adjacent prairie and now buried beneath layers of till, dormant grasses and gangly oak trees. That old stream bed is quite visible, unlike in the geological age when it lay buried beneath an ice sheet perhaps a mile straight up from where I was parked.

Eventually I grabbed my camera with a multipurpose zoom lens and ambled through the gate to follow a motorized trail angling toward the top of the nearest rise where typically hundreds Prairie Smoke plants would be blooming. Small leaves barely the size of a fingernail hugged the ground. Then, off to my left and down the rise a bit, my eye caught a hint of pink, and there it was, small and bowing gently toward the earth, a small Prairie Smoke blossom. Instantly I was onto my stomach focusing the lens. Nature now ruled. All of that confusion and nightmarish thought was suddenly gone. 

After grabbing a few images, I rolled over to sit in the meadow, looking toward the esker, remembering a moment years ago while sitting here a pair of Sandhill Cranes flew over looking thoroughly prehistoric. Now in a distant wetland, a swan floated on the stilled surface, and high above a small pod of  pelicans soared across a single cloud. Nature revived. With each breath my mind eased, little by little. Scents of the meadow and whiffs of spring meshed with the smell of earth. My eyes resettled on the poetry of the lone Prairie Smoke blossom, folded neatly into a perfect poem. 

Moments after I stood and regained my balance, it was off through a shallow valley to the distant hill where perhaps I might find some Pasque Flowers, one of our first of the floral seasons. Finding none, I then ambled toward the massive mound of the esker where dormant prairie grasses and oak trees failed to hide the geological relic.

In time, and after a quick turn through Sibley amd dinner with Jake, I made a stop on the way home on a hill overlooking the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge where I’ve often visited for Pasques, and once again was rewarded. Now fully mature from when I was here just a week before, the blossoms begged for portraits, and I accommodated, once again lying on the ground on the hillside, working the aperture and shutter speeds, playing with the light, doing what one needs to do when making images of nature. Where before the blossoms seem to shrink from sight, they were now open and bold, lifting blueish petals toward the blue sky and drifting clouds.

It was a good day, recharging the soul while celebrating earth … just days before the official Earth Day celebration. 

It’s a day offering many memories, from that first one at an auditorium in Denver while working for the Post, sitting with a friend as speakers stood before a nearly empty cavernous room and wondering if the celebration would actually catch on. That people would understand and pay attention to our lonely planet. A couple of years later I met and interviewed Earth Day founder Sen. Gaylord Nelson at a convention in Laramie, WY. Many years and Earth Day celebrations have since past, including when my Art of Erosion exhibit would be part of a Smithsonian water presentation at Prairie Woods Environmental Learning Center just a few miles from Sibley,. 

And on this Saturday came the enjoyment of some special moments defying the man and his political henchmen  who seems intent on destroying it all. Inspite of that chaos this was what I had been missing, that comforting peace that encourages my spirituality: peace sparked by a lone Prairie Smoke blossom, so colorful, so delicate, bowing poetically as if it in itself was offering a blessing to earth, caressing the prairie with such blissful grace. That was an offered poem I shall never forget.

At first glance the coffee-colored pavement we had entered after a late afternoon of driving through Bryce Canyon National Park seemed just what we needed. A straight shot up to I-70 and our hope of entering our third National Park in two days. Then we crossed the first cattle guard, which brought a smile and comment from Roberta. A mile or so later we crossed another, and another. One cattle guard after another and not one sighting of a beef animal. Not one.

We were in a corner of the Great American Desert. If not for the distant mountains, bluish with a hint of reddish hue, we could have as well been in the Australian outback. Reddish soil. Roundish scrub as far as one could see. If a kangaroo had suddenly hopped into view I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s a lonely stretch of a long, straight highway that has apparently grasped different colloquial names, yet only one appeased me: the Black River Canyon Road. 

As dusk began to settle in around us we entered gentle switchbacks into a valley …  into the actual Black River Canyon! Two colorful Gambel’s quail crept along the foliage. Long-tailed Magpies did near poetic air sprints across the highway. Mule deer grazed along the roadside, and a pair of antelope barely moved as we sped by.

Indeed, it wasn’t until we returned home that we finally realized that the Black River Canyon Road had been a wrong turn! That would have been our second of a very long travel day that had begun in Las Vegas earlier that morning. 

Our first was discovered at the trail’s end of Zion National Park hours earlier. We had stopped at a ranger’s station for a bathroom and sandwich break when I began comparing place names we had passed with a huge map of Zion. My goal had been to follow the Virgin River up to the Narrows, where Roberta had already firmly stated she had no interest in investing in a hike. Me? I was holding onto a final decision.

Imagine my surprise when I realized that after leaving the main park entrance we had veered off toward the eastern entrance of the park and was nowhere near the Virgin River watershed. Not that it wasn’t breathtakingly beautiful, for it was. Not that we would have eventually been on this very road, for this was the route we needed to traverse toward Bryce Canyon National Park.

Apparently our “confusion” happened at Canyon Junction. Had we been more aware we would have immediately realized the challenging switchbacks were on the Zion Mt. Carmel Highway. Perhaps in time we can make it back to Zion, and if so, make the hike up the Virgin River into the Narrows. Yet, two wrong turns in a day? 

Back to Bryce, which would have been a photographer’s joy early in the morning. Back when we realized our wrong turn at Zion we also noticed radically worn rear tires. Treadless tires! So our drive from Zion to Bryce was heart thumping, for we had only seen a single tire shop in a small village. Also, the crowds and overflow parking at Zion was nowhere near what we were seeing. The tire guy in a small village was hopeful we could make it to Tropic, Utah, where he said we would find an actual tire shop. We needed both rear tires, which was before the Tropic tire guy pointed to an outward appearing appendage protruding from one of the front tires. 

“This one is the bad news,” he said. “This tire is actually more dangerous than your rear tires.” We now have four black rubber souvenirs from our trip.

On that Black River Canyon Road we felt suddenly secure. So off we went on the loop toward Torrey and what would be our third park in two days, with an afternoon date with the Arches National Park. It was in Torrey just before the evening news that we ran into our first of two wonderful curry joints, and this one actually served curry pizzas … basically across the highway from a motel where we awakened the owner to rent a room once we convinced him we weren’t traveling with Joe Pye, our ever hopeful “whatever blood” rescue.

Early the next morning after a thoroughly regrettable breakfast we were off to Capitol Reef with its cool abandoned orchards and petroglyphs, not to mention more red sandstone. 

Oh, about that second missed turn? This wasn’t discovered until we were home and scrolling across Facebook when a meme appeared describing one of the ten most beautiful highway trips in the world. Get this: not just in the States, but the world, a highway traversing land between Tropic and Torrey. The “All American Road,” 124 miles of canyonland bliss.

Here is a published poem of explanation: “The way the road connects with the land, feels somehow a part of the landscape, embedded in the slickrock, even though it was once an intrusion into the space. Like the way a lightning strike can ignite a fire in a forest and sweep out gnarly, dense undergrowth competing for sunlight, there is a period of adaptation and recovery. It virtually becomes part of the ecosystem.”

So, within just a few hours our two wrong turns took us away from the Virgin River Valley at Zion and the All American Road between national parks in the Utah desert. Yet, you don’t know what you missed until you realize in the end it made absolutely no difference; that even “wrong turns” can be so exceptionally beautiful.