Saturday, April 23, 2011 - Jacob's Chair Trailhead, Fry Canyon UT
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Jacob's Chair from White Canyon, Fry Canyon UT, April 22, 2011
Gravel Crossing to Jacob's Chair butte
There are only a couple of places to cross White Canyon along here. Behind me in this picture, where I'm camped, is the one known as Gravel Crossing and is the trailhead for the popular OHV trail that encircles Jacob's Chair. Jacob's Chair was named after one of the first settlers in this area. He was killed in a flash flood in 1940 while crossing White Canyon on horseback.
Overcast
It's starting to look like rain. Think I'll delay any more hikes in the canyon until the skies clear.
Night camp
Boondocked - Trailhead to Jacob's Chair, Fry Canyon UT
- Verizon cell phone and EVDO service - no signal
- Locate this camp on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
A Voyage and a Harbor
The native American was forced westward by the young escaping the limits of east coast villages that had been established only a generation or two earlier by parents escaping the limits of European villages. From then on, whether seeking a whale, rafting with Huck Finn, easy riding with Peter Fonda, or next week in Cancun, there has been a strong belief in America that happiness lies somewhere else. And yet as we find freedom we also rediscover loneliness. As geographer Yi-Fu Tuan says, we require both shelter and venture. We need freedom and support, silence and cacophony, the vast and distant but also the warm and near, a voyage and a harbor, the great adventure and the hobbit hole. Much of the iconography of our times gives little sense of this. Instead, the individual is treated as a self-sufficient, self-propelled vehicle moving across a background of other things, other places, and other people.