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Roughly Five Shades of Rock


“Painted desert more like tainted yogurt.” “Nice.” Ed and I had fallen into our typical road trip routine of ironically bad jokes and playing the worst songs we could find. By now we had found our way to a road trip classic for us, “Pinch Me” by Barenaked Ladies. We had been driving for a good three and a half hours and now found ourselves on the I-40 just miles away from the painted desert. “Rocks more coc-“ “Wait, Ed, I think we’re here.” A vast expanse of prismatic rocks had just appeared before us. Shades of purple, white, red and brown rock were stacked on top of each other like multicolored pancakes.

We continued along I-40 weaving in and out of valleys of purple and brown and over mesas white and rusty orange. A giant brown highway sign told us ‘PAINTED DESERT VISITOR CENTER’. We pulled off and got out of the car into a paved yet dusty parking lot. I looked around and saw just about what I expected, a ranger station, a gift shop, those dirty national park restrooms that are a seemingly ubiquitous sign of the outdoors. We marched past all of these buildings, our outdoorsman prowess was way too advanced to be hindered by some park ranger handing us a map. After all, we were in fact the duo who had climbed Flat Iron in the Superstition Mountains mostly and accidentally off of the trail.

We started on down the trail and soon fell into our typical trail talk, “Rob what’s that enzyme you study in lab?”, “I dunno man I really like her.”, “I will literally die if I have to work there for another summer.”. Between our long conversations we would pass pieces of petrified wood or see a rabbit dart across the trail ahead of us. Luckily for us the trail was fairly empty. Tourist season had died down and now only those brave enough to endure the hot Arizona summers were left in the state. We continued along past carved mountains of multicolor stone, crunching our shoes into the trail with a steady rhythm.

After a while our conversations had died down and the sound of buzzing insects and rustling creosote bushes became our soundtrack. Ed always says I don’t take the time to enjoy the scenery when I’m hiking so in an attempt of appeasement I stopped, turned around and looked back on the great expanse of color we had hiked up. Being out in nature always makes me feel so small. I felt like a tiny speck consistent of a black shirt, black shorts and a black hat in an expanse of white, orange, brown, purple, green and grey rock. “I think we should probably think about turning around.” It was late afternoon and we had about an hour’s hike back that I did not want to do in the dark. “Yea, we probably should.”

We were soon back at the parking lot with our Camelbacks empty and socks stained brown with dirt. Brown socks were always the sign of a good hike to me, they’re a badge of honor displaying for the whole world our prowess over nature. We got back in the car and threw on Uncle Kracker’s “Drift Away”.

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