Park Number: 12/63

First Visited: January 21, 2011

My appendix was gone, taken not but a week earlier, but I was in Bryce nonetheless, wandering hoodoos and feeling the weight of a loneliness I wanted to forget. After all, the place is an amphitheater. It only amplifies what you bring to it: awe, wonder, bewilderment, desperation, longing, loss.

This was my first visit to a national park alone, my first lesson in that necessity to share an experience, because I wanted the world to see this with me: the sun rising over the distant ridge with the orange of eroded rock challenging the glow from below.

It was snow dusted then. I was slipping and sliding while navigating those trails of descent. And with each attempt not to fall, my side would ache, my belly still stitched and missing an absent organ. It hurt like hell. But this is a place I'd tear myself open for.

Bryce Canyon was utilzed for seasonal hunting and gathering by Paiute, Pueblo, Fremont, and Anasazi Tribes.

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*Several images on this page by Steve Witmer