This Is What Love Looks Like by Aiden Fay

In 2008 Tim DeChristopher, a University of Utah student, courageously raised his paddle as a bidder in a Salt Lake BLM auction. With no intention of paying, he bid for oil and gas leasing of Utah’s public lands in protest. As he received his sentence to federal prison, he looked the judge in the eye and said six words that instill wonder: “This is what love looks like.”

As we stepped foot into the unknown of the expansive wildness of the desert southwest as students for this course, with distinct lives, backgrounds, and passions—I keep coming back to the question of what my love will look like for the land, and creation as I share my one wild and precious life. We descended through geological time, with abrasive sandy boots, packs filled with our lifeline of gear that facilitated our survival in a hostile environment, and into the ancient canyon we will call home. Six days after our confluence in Green River, Utah, we find ourselves nestled in the Pinyon Pine and Juniper country that defines upper Horseshoe Canyon. Our instructor of 20 years says, “This may be the best day hike in the world”— as we traverse this humbling landscape, I am starting to agree. We cross dinosaur footprints, arches, Indigenous pictographs, and silk-smooth sand caves. Finally, we reach a slot canyon forming in the sandstone, and are given the option to explore down into this young and motherly passage: yonic. We consider, and as one we enter as light becomes obstructed and stone narrows with every step.

Inhalation

Exhalation

My peers’ breathing accelerates, heavies.

Their senses are telling them to turn back – NO

It’s closing in, confined, and claustrophobic.

So we back out and change our order and pace, and move again real realll slow.

We are practicing grace

This place is shaped through deep time, water, erosion, and today our boot prints alter stone into sand ever so slightly.

We move lower, deeper, vulnerable, affecting, and affected.

Walls constrict, and rise high above our heads, my hands glide on either side along cold smooth banks of Navajo sandstone leaving remnants of reds and yellows on sun leathered, cracking and brittle palms.

Old logs jammed in the floor from floods become footholds under our boots.

I pause. I breathe. I am learning.

As I look behind me I am in awe of our two compadres who were struggling most, chipping away footstep by footstep – breath by breath.

They are passing perceived limitations.

The end of the slot is a sheer cliff which is a turnaround point out of necessity. We return, moving up through our prior path as the canyon echoes with belly laughter, peers are boosted up tricky sections, and the light of the sun grows brighter and brighter as we are reborn through stone.

Water has rushed and trickled through this little stretch of the desert eroding further and further; one day this may be a canyon filled with unimaginable flora and fauna reaching far and wide, but for now we are here and these walls have eroded our sense of fear. Beautifully on the edge. Within our capabilities, receptive, and open hearted to the wild. Today the canyon filled me with awe and gratitude, faith in humanity, and dreams. This place is a miracle, and so are we. May we not forget this.

As we continue through this education there will be an erosion of fear through exposure to wildness. There will be many experiences illuminating pain, and broadening perspectives. As Terry Tempest Williams eloquently says, “To care about wilderness is to fall back in love with the world and lament how lost we are, and how lonely we have become.” It will not be easy, but if we are receptive to hidden teachers of Ancient times, allow wildness to permeate our bones, and act with reciprocity from the love we receive, then we are well on our way. I can’t think of better places to find what love looks like than the winding teachings of this young rebirthing canyon.

Love yourself.

Then forget it.

Then, love the world.

To Begin With, the Sweet Grass

-Mary Oliver