The Purple Hoodoos in Red Canyon

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
– Dorothy
in the Wizard of Oz
Ted and Kenidee shimmied up a steep hill covered with shale. Taking a deep breath, I dug my fingers and toes into the clay like a beetle and started after them.
I made it half way up before I started slipping. Husband and dog had already disappeared over the top.
Desperately, I tried to grasp onto something but couldn’t find purchase for either hands or feet. My heart pounded, and my breath came in short gasps.
“I’m going,” I called into thin air, knowing no one could help me. I envisioned the slope below littered with the sharp rocks. It was a long way down, and at the very best I would be scraped and torn.
At the worst, I would break bones. The sensation itself felt like a nightmare.
I still don’t know what happened. Perhaps adrenaline kicked in. Perhaps an unseen guardian angel pushed me upward although I don’t remember praying.
Whatever the reason, all of a sudden, I scuttled uphill until I summitted the top where Ted and Kenidee waited for me.
“I made it,” I panted, standing up. My boots were covered with gooey clay and my fingers abraded from the rocks.
“We’re getting closer,” my hubby said, his way of encouraging me as he started down the other side.
I sighed with relief and followed.
We were on our way to see the purple hoodoos on the east side of Red Canyon.
Eight years ago, I had refused to go with Ted when he wanted to hike an old drill road because the trail was covered with loose shale, making every step treacherous. Aft
er he disappeared up the road, I swept the shale aside, planted myself, and admired the strange landscape.
Ancient junipers and pinyons grew near washes and on ridges, curly grass and cheat grass, blackbrush and sage, tumbleweeds and cacti dotted the hillsides.
But much of Red Canyon’s beauty lay in its bare, variegated clay hills, ranging in color from brown or gray to rust to bright orange to mint green to purple.
Its rocks mirrored the beauty with green polka dots decorating lavender slabs and petrified wood and dinosaur bone evidencing the ancient landscape.
An hour later, Ted returned with tales of purple hoodoos, something he’d never seen.
“It’s a wonderland,” he said, and since he’s not given to hyperbole, I regretted not going with him. And I never forgot.
Eight years later, I told him I wanted to see the hoodoos. I owned sturdy hiking boots with good traction, and if we walked up the dugway, I figured I might skate around on the rocks, but if I took it slow, I could stay on my feet.
After all, drillers or miners had once driven heavy equipment up that road. So, one Saturday in the middle of January, we parked our Jeep at the base of the old road, climbed out, and shouldered our backpacks.
Snow still cloaked the slopes, water ran down the washes, and the sun shone behind a thin layer of clouds. To my dismay, the old road had washed out in places and looked dangerous, if not impossible, to walk on.
At first, I thought the soggy conditions might be helpful. Instead of sliding on the loose shale, we sank into the mud and clay, but the gooey mixture soon proved as slippery as the shale.
We slopped through the clay, crossed patches of snow and ice, and hopped over little rivulets as we made our way toward the hoodoos. I did okay until Ted and Kenidee shimmied up the steep incline and disappeared over the top.
When I finally joined them, Ted reassured me, “We’re getting closer,” and in another half an hour or so, we climbed up the side of a deep wash and into hundreds of rock spires, which, by magical earth alchemy, were indeed a chocolatey purple with some sporting orange caps.
I felt we had crossed the threshold into an ancient hamlet with multistoried homes twisted into incredible shapes. Awe welled up inside of me.
“Awe,” says Dr. Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, “is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.”
Not only does it calm our nervous systems, he adds, it also triggers the release of oxytocin, the “love” hormone, which must be why I fell head-over-heels in love.
Hoodoos, also known as earth pyramids or fairy chimneys, are formed from soft, sedimentary rock like sandstone or mudstone with a sheath of harder rock, like limestone or basalt, covering them.
Water flows into the cracks, expands as it freezes, and then washes rock fragments away when it melts. The harder cap protects the column below, and different minerals create the variety of hoodoo colors, but those facts didn’t explain the awe they inspired.
We spent a satisfying amount of time exploring the hoodoos, which feature multiple caps stacked above each other with the softer, sculpted stone sandwiched between.
We ate our lunch in the shadow of the fairy chimneys before trudging back through the mushy clay. I dreaded facing the hill where, like Humpty Dumpty, I’d nearly tumbled to the ground, but, thankfully, Ted navigated an easier route.
At the top of a knoll, we paused to view the vast landscape, “Look,” my hubby said with a grin, “it’s just like Kansas.”
(If anyone has information about the Blanding Trading Post, located on Main Street where the ice cream parlor is now, and owned by June Powell, LaVerne Tate’s father, and/or his brother, Claude Powell, please email palmermerry@yahoo.com.)