Free Slickrock Paradox by Stephen Legault Page A

Ken: a product of an over-active imagination. Too much sun. Not enough water. Delusions. There’s nothing more to it. So don’t go all Sedona on me. I got enough of that when I was at NAU . I don’t need it from you.”
    â€œEasy, Silas, easy. I’m just saying that you were all convinced that Penny had led you to her . . . to her body yesterday. You had me convinced—and I think New-Age hippies should be used for cord wood in the winter!” He laughed at his own joke. “But you had me convinced. And now, you’re just going to ignore it.”
    Silas was shaking his head. “Ken, it was a dream. Nothing more. I dreamt about my wife, because—”
    â€œ. . . you miss her, amigo. Listen, do you want to come by the place? We’ll fix you a big dinner tonight. You can drink that Canadian beer you like. There’s nobody in the second cabin. You could stay the night. We’ll sit out and howl at the moon. What do you say?”
    â€œI’d like to, Ken, but not tonight, some other time. I need to go home and—”
    â€œAnd what? Stare at your maps?”
    â€œMaybe that’s what I need to do. Right now I just want to sleep. I’ll be fine. Kiss Trish for me and tell her some other night.”
    â€œÂ¡Hasta luego!” said Ken.
    â€œSee you soon,” said Silas as he hung up the phone.
    HE TOOK THE long way home. He wasn’t ready to face the emptiness of his house, but he didn’t want company either. Silas drove his Outback south on Highway 191 and took Spanish Valley Road on his way into the La Sal Mountains. He wove along the dirt roads until he’d left the inferno of the canyon country behind and had passed into the cool sub-alpine area. Here and there the tangled forest opened up and sweeping meadows stretched across the rolling earth like a soft green sheet across a lumpy mattress. Cows dotted the hillsides, grazing their way down to the quick.
    At Miner’s Basin, in a grove of trembling aspen, Silas killed the engine and got out of the car, stretching his back. He took his cane and walked a few yards from the car to stand among the quivering trees.
    The La Sal Mountains were omnipresent in the Canyonlands; one of four great laccolithic mountain ranges that ringed the region. From forty miles distant, in Moab, or from a hundred miles away, from Island in the Sky in Canyonlands National Park, their triangular facades appeared dark and barren. But venture up out of the Spanish Valley and up to eleven thousand feet above sea level and you exchanged the oppressive heat of summer for an eternal spring or perpetual autumn.
    The temperature was a modest eighty degrees as Silas walked slowly along the cattle-worn path through the aspens. A breeze gently ruffled his hair, and Silas wondered why anybody in their right mind—and here he included himself, first and foremost—would spend a single day in the scorched earth of the canyons during the summer. He walked for half a mile, leaning heavily on the cane for support, until his ankle ached. He sat down on the leaf litter at the edge of a clearing below Mount Waas. He leaned back on the stout trunk of an aspen and closed his eyes.
    Penelope had taken him here once, some years ago—five, six? He couldn’t recall now. She had brought along a copy of Desert Solitaire and read to him the chapter called “Tukuhnikivats, The Island in the Desert” about a hiking trip Abbey had taken in the La Sal Mountains to escape the heat of Arches during one of his seasons in the park. At the time Silas had criticized the writing, saying that anybody who talked about pissing, eating, and drinking as much as Abbey could not be taken seriously as a writer. Upon reflection, Silas now thought it was one of Abbey’s finer moments in Solitaire , reminiscent of one of his own favorite bits of prose, The Sound of Mountain Water by Wallace Stegner. He wished Penelope