Salt Lake City, Utah - Well after nightfall on a Friday, I steered my sedan through a barren patch of desert in south-eastern Utah.
I’d just inched up a mess of nerve-fraying switchbacks on Highway 261, where I’d peered past an unguarded edge into a vertiginous gulf of night below. Now the frozen mud ruts of a county road scraped the bottom of my car and I didn’t know where I was.
At that moment, I questioned the wisdom of my weekend mission: camping and finding ruins on Utah’s Cedar Mesa. It was 11pm, about -6°C and very windy – hardly ideal weather for camping.
“Do you want to just pull over soon and set up our tents?” asked Amanda, one of my two travel companions.
Amanda, Ryan and I set up our tents in the flat sand and, before drifting off, I watched the moon cast juniper shadows on the surface of the tent, turning the dome into a glowing web of branches.
At least twice a year, I return to this 112km-long plateau. In a forgotten corner of Utah between the towns of Blanding and Bluff, Cedar Mesa is a riddle of canyons, moss-draped oases and sandstone spires.
Despite the area’s desolate beauty, travellers routinely overlook it in favour of better-known national park sites such as Canyonlands, Arches, Mesa Verde and Chaco. They’re missing out.
Cedar Mesa, which is on land administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), harbours an array of colourful geological formations and hundreds of ruins from ancestral Puebloans, also commonly called the Anasazi, or “ancient enemy” in Navajo.
Many sites have never been excavated, named or mapped, and few modern eyes have seen them. Although ruins in national parks can be larger and more elaborate, Cedar Mesa offers a rare slice of solitude and the thrill of discovery.
Discovering these ruins, however, requires an investment of time and patience, because they’re all tucked in canyons reachable only on foot.
Unlike the National Park Service, the BLM provides few signs, only rough roads and no paved trails. But Cedar Mesa’s wildness is what preserves it. It’s also a large part of its appeal.
The next morning, I woke to wind against my tent and the slanted light of the desert, a tepid bath in the -5°C air. Nearby, we found a stake marking a trail, which we surmised was the fourth fork of Slickhorn Canyon.
We set off along the path of ageing footprints armed with a ragged, dated guidebook, even though we knew that Cedar Mesa defies guides and maps. It’s a place you must discover with your senses, not with your nose in some dusty pages.
As we walked down the wash, ragged collections of cliffs and boulders reared up on both sides. Just as the wash took an abrupt left and tumbled down a steep sandstone cliff, we spotted a high, shaded south-facing alcove – prime real estate for an ancient Puebloan. We veered off-trail.
We clambered up boulders, gripping small nubs in the sandstone, and hopscotched around fields of pristine cryptobiotic soil, which, crusted with delicate cyanobacteria, lichens and mosses, prevents erosion and slows evaporation. (One human step destroys it, and it can take decades to regenerate.)
After scurrying up the last rows of sandstone ledges, we arrived at the ledge to find… nothing. The dwellings we thought we’d seen were eroding clumps of mud.
Behind us, the canyon spread out in an array of pleasing earth tones – muted green, red, beige, the blue of the sky. Protected by the rocks and out of the wind, we contemplated the view and the luxury of having nowhere to be but here.
Motivated by the promise of unseen ruins, we decided to explore the rocky bench in case others lay hidden along it. After skirting around boulders and ducking under shrubs, we found a faint path that led to a wide stage of slickrock. Amanda gasped. Just metres from where we stood, a wall of stones rose from a rocky ledge: the unmistakable work of human hands and minds. We approached slowly, so as not to disturb the animals – or perhaps the spirits – that lived there.
Half a dozen stone-and-mortar structures stood in various states of preservation beneath the cliff. Mud plaster clung to the walls, and the black of long-cold fires scarred the wooden roof beams. Beneath our feet, pot shards cluttered the sand. We squatted and carefully sifted through the earth, as fine as flour.
The ancient Puebloans who lived here between 700 and 2 000 years ago were, of course, real people. Archaeologists believe they lived in small, dispersed clans, grew beans, corn and squash, built stone tools and wove yucca into sandals and string.
They mostly left this area in the 13th century, probably chased away by a drought. But, without written records, no one knows for sure.
We followed the canyon further into layers of wind-smoothed sandstone. Occasionally we spotted cairns, but otherwise charted our own routes.
The quiet of the desert heightens my senses and I notice things: icicles growing like seedlings from seeps in the rock, the mint colour of buffalo bushes, the sound of wind scouring slickrock, and the tracks of mice and lizards.
That afternoon, as we hiked back to camp, the wind suddenly lost its resolve and left us in stillness. Finally we took off our coats and soaked up the undiluted warmth of the sun.
To many, Cedar Mesa’s landscape seems lifeless and forbidding. That’s because the desert doesn’t reveal its beauty quickly. The landscape is vibrant not only with the defiant hues of wild flowers and the stirrings of hidden creatures but with the stories of its human past.
Still, this is not a place that’s easy or obvious for human habitation, and I walked the dry wash knowing that we were temporary interlopers, much like the Anasazi.
The next day, we drove about 15km east to Road Canyon. We wound through piñon and juniper forest and descended rocky benches, like a grand staircase fit for a glamorous entrance.
“Ruins,” yelled Amanda. I followed her pointing finger to a row of cliffs on the other side of the canyon. We darted up the steep slickrock ramps, squeezed around boulders and skirted beneath the cliff to where three dwellings sat overlooking their small kingdom. Peering inside, we spotted a mess of discarded corn cobs. Red handprints dotted the walls.
Even with frequent trips, I’ve uncovered only a minuscule part of Cedar Mesa. But the more unsolvable questions I find, the more they tug at me to return. – The Washington Post
lSiber is a freelance writer based in Durango, Colorado.