Few places in the United States remain as wild as the Colorado Plateau; few have resisted settlement for so long.
We take Utah 12 east from Bryce toward Escalante, Utah — a town of 818 residents that sits at the northern boundary of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This is one of the most isolated pockets of the United States, so secluded that the nearby Escalante River was one of the last rivers mapped in the Lower 48 states.
And yet isolation can be liberating — as I found out when I talked to furniture maker David Delthony and his artist wife, Brigitte. A few years back, while on a Southwest vacation, this couple from Berlin passed through Escalante. On a whim, they bought an old sawmill as an investment. The next year they returned, camped on their property, and began to think that they could make the improbable move to Escalante from a world capital of more than 3 million.
Says Brigitte, "It was almost like moving to the moon. It was challenging to do all at once. And although I haven't totally figured out what it was all about, I do feel it was destiny for me."
Chain-sawed, shaped, and sanded from laminated wood, David's pieces, with their flowing lines, recall the contours of the Escalante region's eroded sandstone formations and canyons. "The visual language of my work fits perfectly with the countryside," he says.
An art therapist who works primarily with clay, Brigitte also finds inspiration in her natural surroundings. "I just don't know," she says, "how an artist can make a better sculpture than what is already here."
That is one of this country's secrets: the way, in unnamed side canyons, moments of perfection play out for neither artists nor writers, but just because.
Not far from Escalante, Calf Creek is one of hundreds of streams on the plateau whose flow eventually makes it to the Colorado River. Tom and I hike along the creek. Ponds created by beaver dams reflect the banded cliffs, while brown trout swim in place, pointed upstream and working lazily against the current. The sound of rushing water builds, and as we round a bend, Lower Calf Creek Falls comes into view. The water plunges through a gap in the rock more than 100 feet up, plummeting into a round pool surrounded by a sand beach.
The air is saturated with an almost invisible mist that feels cool against our faces. We watch as a lone duck lets the current created by the falls' impact carry him to the edge of the pool. He races back for another ride and briefly holds his place against the flow. Then he ceases his paddling and surfs the waves back to the water's edge, over and over again — and even now, in my mind.
