I’m from the country of Texas, an illegal alien in LA going on ten years now. That makes me as city as anyone else, I guess. When I venture beyond the plain of twinkling lights I feel overdressed, my clothes too fine, my car too clean. It’s always the air, the impossibly fresh air, that I notice first.
The rocks played with your reality, oversaturated striations pinked and purpled out, or maybe that was just the polarized Garrett Leights I wore. Everywhere there were these massive chiseled lines going up the sides of the canyon, to be explained away by someone else. Trail paths cut horizontally across the vertical nature of the landscape like they were interrupting a thought process. The rock coloring looked like wet paint dripping off the side of the earth. Weeping water fell into weeping pools. It felt good to be small.
Bryce Canyon looks like a Dr. Seuss x Disney collaboration, if they met up, smoked out, and then drew up plans for a national park. Like Disneyland, there were foreign tourists everywhere. I barely knew this place existed. How did everyone else know?
Six hours got me to a real autumn; fog, cold, rain, all felt like it was the first time. At night, the scent of a roaring fireplace escaping out of the lodge and into the air. Of course I paired Bon Iver with it.
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