Or does it? Some people like to gild the lily. Robert Allen says there is no failure, only feedback. Cute. Thomas Edison is famous for “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” And Elbert Hubbard would have you believe there is no failure except in no longer trying. All well and good. In marriage, however, there are only so many opportunities to succeed before you are terminally morose, psychologically damaged and broke. I have friends in all these categories. It’s not a pretty sight.
Despite the rosy advice above, successful marriages are far from guaranteed with continued efforts. In the United States, only 41% of first marriages end in divorce, while 60 percent of second ones do. If you think the third time’s the charm, get this: a whopping SEVENTY-THREE percent of third marriages end in divorce. Whoa! There are two divorces every minute in the U.S. But for some reason, people bravely keep trying. Marriage counselor William Doherty has an interesting slant on it. He says marriage is a counter-cultural act in a throwaway society.
I am in Category II, with a couple of failed marriages. Siobhan is in Category I, with but a single catastrophe. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but despite the proclamations of Deb Peterson and The Beatles, love is NOT all you need. Love is easy. You also need wisdom, patience, generosity, openmindedness and the ability to compromise. The lack of a roving eye wouldn’t hurt, either. As many marriages are wrecked on the shoals of extra-curricular hanky-panky as anywhere else. Why get married at all then? It’s an obvious minefield.
Well, I’ve always been a counter-culturist at heart. If the hoi polloi is going one way, I’m looking for another alternative. Besides, I figure 75 years of life on this planet have wised me up to a few things. One of them is that a day is what you make of it. Nobody is irrefutably trapped by inertia, confined to a dungeon of incessant predictability where every day has to be the same. Be creative. Do something valuable with your time, try something different. Keep a little romance in your life. Prepare your partner a surprise every now and then, and one that is not a trip to a Braves game or an outing which mostly involves fishing. What would she like, what would be special to her? It’s easy to figure out. Just watch her, listen to her, see what things she discusses with her friends. It doesn’t take a genius.
After awhile, when your stock room starts to run out of the little surprise packages, it’s time to go into the vault and pull out a big one. Not everyone can afford two tickets to Fiji, but most people can manage a weekend in Manhattan and a Broadway show. There’s a cruise out there for every inclination and every pocketbook. If the best you can do is a dinner close to home, at least make it the nicest place in town. Believe me, no woman is all that impressed with Outback. You should know better by now.
If you are not married already, the ultimate surprise is The Proposal, especially after thirty years of cohabiting. And then combining the wedding with the correct honeymoon, thus the mule-train descent into the Grand Canyon for a nature-lover who likes to ride, a.k.a. Siobhan. If all this fails, well, it won’t be from a lack of effort, something which might not be said for the previous two disintegrated marriages.
So wish us luck, my friends, as we plunge onward, two wild and crazy guys trying mightily to negotiate our way through the often-soupy fog of life. Some days will be idyllic and some will be harrowing, but if we have anything to say about it—and we certainly do—none of them will be boring. You only live once, if at all, and you don’t want to keep it on Cruise Control all the time. Sometimes you gotta open up that Hot Rod Lincoln. We’d prefer to go out with a bang, not a whimper. Cheers!
Vacation Month, Part III—Las Vegas To Zion To Bryce
When the sun goes down, the tide goes out, the people gather round and they all begin to shout, well, it sounds like it might be time for a quick vacation. If it really is a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi Mud, think how much fun you’d have stomping along in the North fork of the Virgin River as it passes through the Zion Narrows in faraway Utah. You can go and swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar and be better off than you are—or would you rather be a mule? And a stay-at-home mule, at that. If you want to see that voodoo, that hoodoo that you know so well, it’s right around the corner in Bryce Canyon.
Zion Canyon in the southwestern corner of The Beehive State is a mere 2 1/2-hour drive from Las Vegas, 163 miles if you’re counting. The trip culminates in tiny Springdale, just outside the park, which is where you’ll probably stay. To make things convenient and traffic bearable, there’s a free shuttle bus which takes you from the town to the park and back. It stops everywhere, including right in front of Flanigan’s Inn, where we stayed. Just to be fair, Mr. Flanigan’s nightstand provided a book on the teachings of Buddha to go with your Gideon Bible, which goes to show you that everyone in Utah might not be a Mormon.
First day, we hiked to the upper pool on the Emerald Pools Trail, a pathway that was full of hiking rookies. Not far along, a red-faced and winded woman blocked our path. “Do you have any candy?” she asked. This, of course, is highly inappropriate behavior in hikingdom, an offense which could lose you your trekker’s card. Siobhan gave her water, chewing gum and some grapes. Real hikers don’t carry candy. We didn’t see the miscreant on the way back so she either made it to safety or fell off into the underbrush. Apparently, the word got out about the suckers with the chewing gum because a little while later we encountered a younger man, wretchedly out of shape, who had the terrible trail etiquette to ask for “a BOTTLE of water.” What, do we look like, The Salvation Army? There’s no crying in Baseball and there’s no free water bottles in Hiking. Siobhan, ever the tough taskmaster, gave him a couple of iodine pills and an empty Gatorade bottle. Make your own water, dipwad.
Next morning, the real climbing began with a trip to Observation Point, eight miles with an elevation gain of 2000 feet to a final altitude of 6507 feet and a spectacular view of the canyon below. A worthy adventure and a good warmup for the following day’s march through the wet and colorful Narrows. We were up at 5:30 next morning to catch the little bus from the outfitter’s next door to the rambling Chamberlain Ranch, a voyage of one hour. We were joined by nine other dauntless souls in the crowded conveyance, a quiet crew for the most part but preferable to the busfuls of yahoos singing “It’s A Small World, After All,” which can be found elsewhere. Only eighty hikers a day are allowed through the Zion Narrows and most days there are far less. To make the hike, a permit must first be obtained from park rangers who will advise you to check the weather before departing. Apparently, rainstorms several miles off can quickly flood the slot canyons and carry unsuspecting hikers to their doom. This, of course, rarely happens but it gives the rangers exciting stories to tell.
To make this long journey more comfortable, we had rented neoprene booties and water shoes (they drain), along with shoulder-high poles about the size of broom handles with a short rope looped through a hole an inch or two from the top, the better to probe the depths.. We carried all this along with our package from the muffin lady, obtained the night before. If there’s anything worse than day-old muffins, it’s no muffins at all.
The first couple of miles of this hike—in relatively cool weather (it was July)—is through the cow-filled meadows of the ranch along tiny tributaries of the Virgin River Easy going. At our first check point, we were 22 minutes ahead of schedule. It is important to have a schedule so you don’t poke along throughout the trek and wind up walking in the dark and missing the final shuttle back to town, which left at 7 p.m. After entering the deeper water of the actual canyon, things slow down as you slog back and forth from one side of the river to the other, seeking the easiest going. At the second check point, we were 43 minutes behind. This was a third of the way through the hike. Projecting a similar loss of time for the final two-thirds, we would arrive after dark and after shuttle, so we picked it up. The next two checkpoints found us without further time loss. Then Siobhan’s knee went out. It does this from time to time. We thought there might be an escape route at a camping spot called The Grotto, there being a trail with the same name. Sorry, wrong number. There are only two ways out of the Zion Narrows, the way we came in and the exit on the opposite end. The water is too low for boat rescue and the cliffs too close together for helicopter relief even if you have a way to alert anyone. We were 60% of the way through so it was obvious which way we were going. Shortly, as if the knee recognized the impossibility of the situation, it popped back into place and we resumed the pace.
Now came the most difficult part of the hike through the narrowest section of the canyon where hikers are in the water 90% of the time. The river, which had been ankle-to-knee-deep for most of the trek, now rose to waist-high on several occasions, slowing us down a lot. Since we were measuring ourselves against the average hiker, however, we gained time in this stretch, a nice surprise. We eventually walked out of the river at 11 hours and forty minutes, ahead of all but one of the other hikers and in plenty of time for the shuttle. I collapsed into a bathtub at the hotel, a spot I could have remained forever were it not for Siobhan’s insistence on dinner. Nobody had any trouble sleeping that night.
Bryce Canyon And The Hoodoos
The following morning, it was off to Bryce, only about two miles east of Zion. The road out of ZNP is steep and winding so Siobhan got to drive, a good alternative to putting her in the passenger seat and listening to all the blood-curdling screams. I’m not sure what Bryce is like in 2016 but in those days the whole place was presided over by Ruby. Ruby owned the hotel, the restaurant, the fast-food joint, the gas station, the campground and the recreational vehicle park. It was all-Ruby, all the time. There was a nightly rodeo across the street which Ruby didn’t seem to own but she probably rode the bucking broncs. We took a three-hour tram tour around the place administered by George “Spike” Brown, who was kind enough to lend us his binoculars so we could look out eighty miles over the vast expanse of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. George told us if it was a clear day we could have seen two HUNDRED miles. Dang it—just our doggone luck.
Next morning, it was an easy hike through the unique and famous red rock hoodoos via the Navajo Loop/Queen’s Garden Trail, a singular experience. Nowhere in the world are these tall skinny spires of gleaming rock as abundant as they are in the northern section of Bryce Canyon National Park. Bryce’s hoodoos range in size from that of an average human being to heights exceeding a ten-story building. Formed in sedimentary rock, hoodoo shapes are affected by the erosional patterns of alternating hard and softer rock layers. The name given to the rock layer that forms hoodoos at Bryce is the Claron Formation. This layer has several rock types including siltstones and mudstones but is primarily limestone. Thirty to forty million years ago, this rock was born in an ancient lake that covered much of Western Utah. Minerals deposited within different rock types cause hoodoos to have different colors throughout their height. The motel people promised us a magnificent show at dawn, “perfect for your photographs.” We believed them and got up at the crack of dawn to partake. The shots we got were okay but couldn’t hold a candle to the hotel’s postcards. This just confirmed my longstanding belief that there’s not much worth getting up at dawn for. Remember when we were all hippies and the super-hippies kept exclaiming over the wonders of welcoming some solstice or another at dawn on the beach? I never went for that one either. I think at one time or another someone in charge took away my hippie membership card. It’s been tough but I’ve managed to struggle through life without it.
Here Comes The Bride
Only three days to go before the Big Wedding in Sin City. The luggage is packed and the minister’s waiting. Siobhan was discussing the upcoming event with her niece/maid of honor Ashleigh the other day and Ashleigh promised to bring along her Bridesmaid’s Kit. Bridesmaid’s Kit? People have Bridesmaid’s Kits? Who knew? Does everybody have one or are they just for inordinately popular people? What’s IN the Bridesmaid’s Kit? Is it full of buttons and bows or is there a lasso in there to help retrieve escaping husbands-to-be? Do they have Xanax in the kit or just a little weed to calm the nerves? It’s a whole new wonder to cogitate over, this Bridesmaid’s Kit. Who says you don’t learn something new every day?
Next week, we’ll be gone, of course, but we haven’t forgotten you. We’re rerunning the fabled Glacier National Park column with a batch of never-before-published photographs you’re sure to love. If you’re not busy this Saturday—or even if you are—you’re invited to watch Ashleigh and Siobhan march down the aisle at 4 p.m. EST. I’ll try to make it, too. I don’t want any of those mean bridesmaids running after me with a lasso.
Watch the big doings LIVE at:
https://www.littlechapel.com/our-wedding/1143117
And remember—NO GIFTS. Greeting cards cheerfully accepted at P.O. Box 970, Fairfield, Fla. 32634
That’s all, folks….
