1.31

I drove hours to see the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I arrived at Capitol Reef with hours of daylight. I walked through a boring desert just to see the valley from above. I saw two natural arches and talked with a young man living a dream life, wandering the country. I caught a ride with the kindest family in an RV, who gave me a coke and a ride to my car five miles away. And, while I was looking at a wall of hieroglyphs through my binoculars, the thought occurred to me--say: it's getting pretty dark. I wonder where the sun is?
I drove hours just to see a sunset in a specific spot, looking at a specific set of rocks. I waited all day in the searing heat and dry mountain air just to feel the cool evening drop around me as the sun shot pure fire onto the waiting vista. I planned around a single moment, and like a soft breath from a dying man, the day perished and left me empty.
I took my car deep into the canyon, willing the sun to move back. I despaired of my chances of seeing anything I wanted to see. The steep slickrock walls towered above me, a dusky brown now, losing their sanguine luster. The sand beneath the car tires faded to match the roadway. The scrub disappeared into the gloom. I had one last gasp of dying daylight to see the tanks, natural pits of gathered water in a vast desert, and then--darkness.
I was alone. Essentially nothing had gone the way I wished. I crunched with near-silence through the expansive night, and a bat swooped down just to my face and flit back again. It dashed back and forth, just at eye-level, catching something I couldn't possibly detect. He paced me, always just in front and never too close, for a quarter mile. Feeling a growing, picturesque melancholy, I pulled out my ukulele and played three songs, quiet, into the soft darkness. I drove out of the slot canyon and out into the open expanse where the sky suddenly dominated the world. No moon, no sun, just a hemisphere of stars, a deep blue-black field of firmament with a soft streak of purple-white where the milky way arms encircle our view.

I had accidentally traded one spectacle for another, and the more I think about it, the more satisfying the loss has become. I do not equate my missed sunset with my nocturnal chiroptic friend. There's no equality in emotion. But I am not disappointed by the loss of a familiar when it has been replaced by something portentous, inexplicable, new.