Utah is Mars.

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My favorite ride, of all time, was on an abandoned road in southern Utah. Here's some of what I wrote to Delphine about it:

The sun was setting and the only sound to be heard was the gentle, oddly casual "bumbdumbumbdumbum" of Le Doigt's muffler. The sound was totally alone in an air of utter silence like the first chirp of a bird at sunrise. I was alone on the bike with nowhere in particular to be and was driving with a style to match. In fact, the overwhelming feeling I had was that I had already arrived; here, alone, with nothing but empty air and the lazy drumming of the muffler. The landscape was incredible. I was weaving through a thin, windy valley with tall, strait, red rock on one side and an open, wavy valley of toenail-white rock extending off on the other side. Each corner swung me into different alterations on the same theme: I was on a vanilla covered mars-scape. The (very) odd river brought the surface of the valley suddenly down (the rock is very soft so river erosion is sudden), begging me to lean out to see over the shoulder of the road into the deep, steep valley floor. The odd hawk would twirl above the rocks but the landscape was otherwise still. Just me, Le Doigt, and the tremendously calming drone of the engine.

There were no trees at all here: the swings in temperature (40 degrees in the day and 5 degrees at night) made each and every plant struggle to live. I have, many times, encountered landscapes that made it look as though life was flourishing beyond belief, like it couldn't be kept down. And, similarly, I have seen many landscapes where life just didn't have a chance. But never have I seen a place where life's struggle was so apparent. This was life holding on for dear life.

Up, up, up and I found myself alone at the top of a gorge filled with a blue brown river lazily rolling down the hill, as though the river was tired from a hard day fighting the heat and now could relax. After a couple of hours the whole sky - apart, luckily, from the part I was riding under - was filled with lighting storms and heavy, soft rain, like a broken spider web being dragged across the mountains by the clouds.

Before too long I was in a small town and (after saving a dog from a busy road!) I found a little campsite and settled in for the night, just in time for the rain to pour in. I didn't say ten words that night... I just sat under the roof of the campsite's restaurant, outside, and watched the lighting move in.

Utah is raw. It is like you can see the bare beginnings of a Colorado-style landscape, like the skeleton of a skyscraper under work. You wouldn't want to call it beautiful, just like Neil Armstrong might not have wanted to call the Moon beautiful, at least not in the traditional sense. It's fascinating, miraculous, and awesome. It takes concentration to behold. It's something I will go back to, some day.

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