“Grand Staircase: Field Notes on Age, Time, and the High Desert” by Claudia Mauro

I've been afraid of time lately. All that happens inside it.

 So I went to country made of nothing but time.

The last five years have seen five surgeries and one serious illness. 

What I have cherished most in this life is the ability, freedom and strength to move freely in wild, remote county.

It has been 15 maybe 20 years since I’ve been in the Grand Staircase of the Escalante Wilderness. I have not fully opened the throttle with my body for a long time.

The last time I was in this high desert, navigating a trailless 15 or 20 mile solo route was challenging, but it was possible. Fairly steep slick rock pitches, and boulder hopping the same. Challenging but possible. What about now?

I feel the differences in the way I move now. A hesitation, a caution, protective, staggered. What part mental? What part physical? What part other?

When the latest casualty, my left knee, was mostly healed I’d still catch myself limping. Not by need, but by habit. So I've been playing with motion lately. Finding places that limp and places that flow. 

If I exaggerate the places in my gait that hurt, I move like a woman 30 years older. If I turn the volume down on those same places, I move like someone 30 years younger.

Here, when I have found a difficult (for me) move on a piece of earth, I've been repeating it—looking for where the fear and fear of pain are hiding in my movements. Looking to be awake to it, looking for what I can adapt, looking for what works.

Now nothing in coming down here is about creating a parable about overcoming limitations by working harder, or "wanting it more" than some other woman. I have no interest in defining any of this as mythic journey, complete with symbolic milestones. Fuck that, and all the ego it arises from.

 I don't need an antagonist, and don't want to be a protagonist. No interest in age-shaming or injury-shaming. What could I possibly prove? I just want to know what choices I have, what adaptations I can create. 

I’ve come for a mediation with time, to this place, where one mile of walking covers 500 million years. Autobiography in sandstone and shale that reads:

“Here I was a river, here I was a volcano, here an ocean, here there were dinosaurs, then a rainforest, another desert, another volcano, an inland sea. You want to talk about time? Yours? Honestly. Try to be serious.”

So yes, I am aging. I do have limitations, but I want to know what they are, and where they are— mind, body, and soul— because I will die of something, but I don't want to die from lack of imagination. 

So far, one thing is clear—pain and fear aren't going anywhere. 
And I am not going to "overcome" those two with rotating versions of self-will and hubris. They are going to have their seat at the table from now on. But where I've been holding them up as both bully and prophet, I want to hold them as advisors instead.  Trusted advisors.

An extraordinary thing occurred a few days ago. I was driving the jeep on a remote tract. I had seen no one else for at least 30 miles. I came to the crossroads of a dry wash, and two four-wheel roads. Two other beat-up vehicles there. Two other women. All of us solo, all come from a different direction. All of us 60 or better. 

Clearly, none of us was there for company, but the fact that we had all traveled over half a century to meet at this unlikeliest of places at this precise time was not lost on any of us.

A camp stove was fired and a coffee ensued. The fierceness of light showed every powerful line in their faces. I have never seen clearer eyes. Polished from inside. Raptor’s eyes.

We talked a bit. No one asked "And what do you do?" We did tell each other where we'd be for the night:

"I'm over the next wash about a half-mile."

"I'll be over by the Spencer ranch land near that broke corral."

"I'll be on the BLM side of barbwire gate by that white-purple sandstone rise."

Nobody planned on encroaching on anyone else's solitude, but the unspoken message of the info exchange was clear:

"I got you."

If anything comes up, two other Valkyries are close and ready to help, swords blazing if necessary.

“I got you.”

As we talked, we came to a few basic things:

"Happily ever after" is a ridiculous and painful plan, but happiness is real, though it comes and goes as a Grace and by its own volition, not as a thing pursued. And it is possible to be happy, sometimes for years on end, and not know it. No more sleep walking. 

About Claudia Mauro
She/Her/Hers

Claudia Mauro is a poet, science writer, photographer, and the founding director of the nonprofit literary publisher, Whit Press. She is the recipient of two Seattle Arts Commission CityArtist Grants, and a Wyoming Arts Council Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry.

She is a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle, PENAmerica, and The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. An alumna and former board member of Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat. She has also served as a judge for the Lambda Book Awards.

Her books include the nonfiction and poetry collections; ‘Stealing Fire’ and ‘Reading the River’ (Whiteaker Press 1999, 2004). Both collections were finalists for the Lambda Book Award. Claudia also has extensive experience as a back-country pilot in Alaska, and was employed for over 20 years as a field science tech for the Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game, and for NOAA as Marine Science Tech crew on three of their research and survey vessels.

She is currently working on two photo and essay projects for the US Department of Fish&Wildlife, and the National Park Service. She lives and writes in Jackson, Wyoming.