Seven days in the bot­tom. Land of the hoodoo stone, the Col­orado River, and noth­ing much of human form or func­tion. Down the Bright Angel, quickly leav­ing those mule-shit stained and well-tram­pled miles be­hind, off over the rolling Kaibab Plateau, with a dis­tant no­tion of ex­it­ing up from through the wild boul­ders of the New Hance canyon. Af­ter­noons in the cool creek beds worn smooth by ages of slow sea­sonal trickle, idling in the shade while our clothes dry in the sun. Morn­ings spent climb­ing the same rocks to greet the warm­ing sun. We could live here, all agreed, at each camp. Nights spent watch­ing the dis­tant cliffs flare up and then fade to re­veal a star strewn sky bounded only by the dark lines of the canyon’s dis­tant rims.

The top. We wan­der the Grand View Point Gro­cery and Gift like lost chil­dren of some never-con­tacted tribe on an acid trip. Our eyes flicker madly from brightly col­ored ob­ject to shiny doo­dad. We stand frozen at the doors of the re­frig­er­ated cases. We oc­ca­sion­ally stop in the mid­dle of the aisle to gape at the flo­res­cent lights while the mid­west­ern tourists stare at us. (But there is music com­ing out of the ceil­ing here). They found us in the ed­dies be­tween the over­sized tshirt racks and led each of us out by the hand to the bus bound for Phoenix. I don’t think any­one man­aged to buy so much as a candy bar.

On the bus ride across the steam­ing as­phalt slapped over the rolling desert plain most of us are still a lit­tle out of sorts. Ex­cept Josh, who only yes­ter­day was cheer­ily lead­ing us all through an end­less af­ter­noon of wa­ter­less canyon. At the mo­ment I’m in no great shape my­self, but across the aisle of the bus Josh is dying. His heart is still down in the canyon and he is star­ing out the win­dow to­ward it with mourn­ful eyes and a pulse that is get­ting fainter by the mile. Due to some va­gary of time and bus sched­ules we hadn’t got­ten a chance to say a proper good­bye to the canyon, and it seemed that this sin of omis­sion might be mor­tal.

By evening we are talk­ing with gusto over food (and water, with ice) of the tri­als civ­i­liza­tion had in store for us. Josh, how­ever, re­mained in crit­i­cal con­di­tion through the evening and the whole trip home. Only mo­men­tum car­ried him back to his life in the city, where his heart re­turned to him a few days later.

Climb­ing out of the canyon seven years ago began my fas­ci­na­tion with the ques­tion “Why do we re­turn?” to the hu­man-built, the tech­nol­ogy sat­u­rated (and pol­lu­tion and strip-mall rid­den) thing we call civ­i­liza­tion. We are seek­ing some­thing in the wilds that can­not be found in our cities and towns — much has been thought and said about this among the semi-feral. But why do we re­turn? I began to hunt for an­swers in books and con­ver­sa­tions. I watched the process of re­turn more closely in my­self and in friends. I left be­hind my own heart a few times. (I couldn’t tell you where — you’ll have to go and find it for your­self). I began to see the pat­terns.

At first the an­swers I found fo­cused on some re­stric­tion of the wilds:

We are out of food. –Ed Abbey

Mother na­ture’s quite a lady but you’re the one I need. –Johnny Cash

Wilder­ness … where man him­self is a vis­i­tor who does not re­main. –US Con­gress

and while these an­swers are prag­matic and po­etic, they are re­spond­ing to ex­treme cases. Abbey couldn’t get more food in his sheer-walled river canyon, but cer­tainly there are wild places where hu­mans can ob­tain food (say by hik­ing to the store in the near­est town). Cash’s croon­ing brings to mind the cow­boy era, but today there are plenty of ex­am­ples of com­pan­ion­ship in the wild. My wife is my part­ner on most ram­bles. Josh’s sweetie was with us on the Grand Canyon trip. Ray and Jenny Jar­dine have been ad­ven­tur­ing to­gether for decades. Wilder­ness has a fixed de­f­i­n­i­tion for the US gov­ern­ment but there are plenty of semi-wild, non-pub­lic lands that are not in­cluded How­ever, note that stays on Na­tional For­est land are lim­ited to 60 days in one place. This reg­u­la­tion has been used to evict (among oth­ers) Russ­ian home­stead­ers in Alaska try­ing to stake their claim in 2003.

After more se­ri­ous think­ing I re­al­ized that we re­turn be­cause civ­i­liza­tion pulls us back, not be­cause the wilds push us out. We are drawn to the bits of human beauty in the city, the bea­cons of the fu­ture, even though they are nested amid hu­man-wrought de­struc­tion. The wilds have merely sharp­ened our artist’s eye, re­freshed our hope, topped off our soul’s abil­ity to be­lieve in a place where we can live in close prox­im­ity and in a fu­ture of well made and use­ful in­ven­tions.

On the great moun­tain (or desert plain or deep for­est) we ex­pe­ri­ence a place so un­touched by peo­ple and ma­jes­ti­cally in­dif­fer­ent to mankind that by sheer con­trast it brings us into focus. The wilds wipe clean the can­vas of our imag­i­na­tion (spong­ing away an over­flow­ing gray-tinted mess of roar­ing traf­fic, the old man with hat-in-hand on the cor­ner, the war on tv, and other pow­er­ful im­ages of world­sick­ness), and give us the abil­ity to start dream­ing a new mas­ter­piece. We are ready to find a bet­ter use for as­phalt, to re-chan­nel the the flows of power, to remix our mythol­ogy. We re­turn be­cause we be­long in both worlds: the wild and the fu­ture we are build­ing.

Sarah Stephens