The Itch

Have you got the itch?  No, I don’t mean from some mysterious rash on your skin!  I mean the itch to get going, working, traveling, exercising, interacting, or (you fill in the blank).  I am lucky here that plenty of various hiking opportunities are available, even though Utah’s national parks are still closed.  This is not the case for a lot of you out there, where your movements are pretty restricted.  How many times can you clean your house?  Even some regular phone or Skype conversations are getting pretty boring, as the same topics are coming up over and over.  I even mowed the lawn in my small backyard today.  A first for me, as I had never mowed a lawn before.  Now, if I get antsy, I can do that every several days.  Now that’s pretty sad. 

So, for your entertainment pleasure, I will describe the hike I took yesterday.  It’s starting to get warm here, so the hiking south towards St George that I had been doing is probably finished until the fall since it is much warmer down there than it is here.  I tried out a new trail that is only about 13 miles south of my house.  It is named the Spring Creek Canyon Trail.   One of my interests during this time of the year is photographing the local wildflowers, and I did quite a bit of that yesterday in addition to photographing the mind blowing surroundings of this canyon.

The path from the trailhead first went through a notch in the volcanic tuff that had been carved out by the water action of the creek over untold number of years.  The terrain then opened up into a broad valley surrounded by steep and pointy sandstone formations.  After about 1.5 miles of this, the magic started to happen.  The trail entered a narrow slit in the sandstone wall that had also been carved by Spring Creek.  This section is advertised as a slot canyon, although probably too wide in most places to be called that in a technical sense.  Here we had steep, colorful and oddly textured sandstone walls, lots of cool shade, and the meandering creek for most of the way ahead.  Because of this cool and shady environment, the wildflowers here were quite different than those in the first part of the trail.  I was thrilled to find such a magnificent place so close to home.  Of course, I plan to go back soon, and hike further into the slot to see what I can discover.  

I send blessings to all of you for good health and prosperity.  My fondest wish is that, wherever you may be, you find a way to scratch that itch and get yourself moving in a positive way, no matter how small.  Remember that all of this will eventually pass.