As the raven flies, Moab is only one hundred twenty miles from Escalante, but there is no easy way to get here. Starting north over Boulder Mountain then past the weather-beaten badlands of the San Rafael Swell, east on I-70 across the Green River, then south toward the foot of the snowy La Sals, visible for most of the distance, the trip takes four hours by car. Once an isolated uranium boomtown on the backside of its slope, the city has in recent decades gone full tilt in the other direction, selling the rich vein of a newly discovered ore called off-road recreation. This deal has turned out to be Type 3 Fun for its residents, who now put up with gawking crowds of tourists, shops hawking trinkets and t-shirts and cheap memorabilia. It means a mile-long line at the gates of Arches National Park; it means diners besieged by floodlights, the belching of buggies and four-by-fours, and the screeching of tires; streets so jammed by bike racks and vanlife rigs that you can't take a left on Main Street most days of the year. Motor Mecca, Desert Disneyworld. But I need to get out of town, and winter is the slow season. Plus I have an excuse—it's for work. That's why I'm here, five hundred miles from the nearest ocean, at the best sushi place in town.
There’s nothing like eating alone to back you up against yourself. It happens more than it should, that feeling. No friendly egos to shield or be shielded by. Those casually judgmental eyes of strangers, all the more cruel and dismissive for how quickly they lose interest. Their owners, giving themselves back to conversation, to talking and laughing, worlds away. My own wandering further than they would if they had something—or someone—to draw my focus.
My coworker D and her boyfriend, B, used to live here a few years ago. On the drive this morning, she talked about a trip they took to Japan.
“These would be buried”, she said as we crested the pass, pointing from the passenger seat at the ten-foot orange poles marking the edge of the highway for plows. There was enough to bury our Ram 1500, but not as much as the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, among the snowiest places in the world. They chose to rent a car to have the freedom to explore on their own, but didn't see any of the countryside. Instead the snow was piled so high that it was “like driving through a snow tunnel”, she said. At the Sapporo Snow Festival, where this abundance is celebrated, they walked among massive ornate ice sculptures, watched locals skid curling stones down frozen lanes, and conversed with schoolchildren instructed to practice their English on westerners.
Already they had seen the energetic density of Tokyo, with its thousand-year-old temples tucked between urban architecture of glass and polished steel. They slept on bedrolls in traditional hostels called ryokans, behind rice paper walls partitioning them from other guests. Floating from gardens and grottoes across the city, beside placid pools and carefully arranged rock gardens, the delicate aroma of cherry blossoms buzzing with bumblebees and hummingbirds.
One of their last stops was the Hokkaido Zoo, where they saw a sign for the Hokkaido brown bear, picturing something small and cuddly. “Everything in Japan is cute,” D explained. As opposed to the much smaller black bear of the Japanese mainland, however, the Hokkaido brown bear is related to Kodiak bears of Alaska, among the largest in the world. (Males can weigh upward of 1,300 pounds.) Approaching the enclosure, D&B, both avid backpackers, were shocked at the possibility of encountering one in the wild, where the population is estimated at over 10,000. The bears are omnivorous opportunists, with a diet that includes pine nuts, pine bark and sap, berries, acorns, grasses, roots, and bulbs, as well as fish, small mammals, birds, larvae, ants, and other insects. Upon emerging from hibernation in early spring they are especially hungry, gorging themselves after the long winter fast.
We expect travel to change us, make us into better, more informed, more compassionate people. In a sense it does. Seeing and appreciating firsthand the experiences of others, their joys and struggles, the ordinariness of their lives, lends a fuller understanding of the human experience, our common dignity and connectedness. Especially those places so exotic and diametrically opposed to everything we have been taught and habituated to that radically alter our perspective on what is “normal”. Japanese culture, for example, values social harmony over individual freedoms. This quiet but carefully enforced code be noticed in the formality and discipline of interpersonal interactions—where deference to authority is held highest—to the cleanliness of streets and public restrooms. Even candid expression of emotion outside the home is considered unbecoming, sullying to common social etiquette. These experiences are a chance to question the way we do things. An opportunity for opening.
When I moved to Utah I thought the same thing. I hoped it would bring forward some latent or underdeveloped aspect of my personality, that I would find soil where a new seed could sprout. But one year in, I realize I haven’t changed at all. I have the same distractions, compulsions, and shortcomings that frustrated me in New York. I'm still hungry. Hearing travel stories like this used to excite me for the bottomless font of human experience that is available in the world. Now it lands as a reminder of all the things I'm missing out on.
I step out of the truck a few blocks from Main Street, across from single-story houses with signs in front lawns: Throttle Down in Town. I tuck my chin against the cold as I trot onto the sidewalk, then reach up and swing open the door of the restaurant. I step into a dark corner entryway framed by two carved mahogany panels, each topped with a traditional painting of a figure in a kimono. At the space between their meeting, a podium. Behind it, a girl. She wears a shoulderless black top, black glasses, and bouncy brown hair pulled back in a loose tussle. Her long swooping bangs fall to her cheek in front of her left eye.
“One please,” I say.
She purses her lips and scrutinizes an iPad. “Bar okay?”, she asks. “It will be about 20 minutes.”
“No problem,” I say, then recite my name and phone number, which she swiftly punches into the keypad.
There are no benches. I stand awkwardly.
“I guess… I'll wait in the car,” I say, then think better of it. “—or I'll... stand here talking to you,” I stammer.
Her eyes widen and she gives me a coy smile. She leans forward, elbows on the top of the podium, arms folded. “Okay then,” she says, “let’s talk.”
The room slides like an avalanche. Noise drops to zero.
Her name is S, she says. We chat about my work, about Escalante. It's fine, I say, but there aren't many good food options. I have to take advantage when I can. She's also the baker at a popular café in town, she says.
“We're going there tomorrow morning!”, I beam.
“Get a scone,” she says with a wink, then looks down. “Good thing you stuck around. Looks like there's a seat for you.”
She leads me to the small side of an L-shaped bar and lays a menu next to a neat setting of ceramics. I hang my jacket on the back of the chair as her black clogs click away beneath bell-bottom jeans. On the back of her neck, a tattoo: two zigzag lines stacked on top of one another—an Aquarian. Under the glass in front of me, lit by blue neon, translucent slabs of tuna, salmon, and eel are laid out. A refrigerator tube frosted with tiny ice crystals. When the server comes I order two rolls, which arrive ten minutes later. The eyes of the crowded restaurant I don't feel at all.
Taste—The sweet acridity of wasabi's nasal burn. The cool complexity of ginger. Pucker of soy sauce. Sticky rice, velvety fish, the crunch of cucumber. Each bite perfectly portioned. I take my time.
The server clears my dishes and drops the check. S approaches at my shoulder to ask how it was. To hell with social etiquette.
“You already have my number,” I say, the words tumbling out before than I can think, “so I think it’s only fair that you give me yours.”
It’s still winter in the desert. It might yet be weeks until poplar leaves, bursting forth from syrupy buds, once again fill the river with life, until colorful blooms of globemallow and primrose and prickly pear punctuate the blocky, barren expanse. But look at the butterflies, butterflies everywhere.
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