Into the Canyon

Notice the ground starting to drop away under your boots? The trail's tipping over the edge now, folding back on itself in switchbacks, carrying you down off the plateau and into the gorge. Take the corners easy. With every turn the air gets a few degrees cooler on your skin, and the light goes soft and green, like somebody dimmed it. That's the canyon closing in over you. Listen — that low steady rush coming up from below is the South Fork of Silver Creek. Small creek. Patient one. You could step across it in places, and yet this whole gorge is its doing. It's been sawing down through stone for longer than anybody can hold in their head, working slow, never stopping, and every foot you drop is a page of that work, the walls rising up on either side as you sink toward the water. Look how the descent has its own weather. Up at the rim it was bright and breezy; down here it's still, and damp, and hushed. Run your hand along the rock on the inside of a bend if you like — it's cool to the touch, sweating a little. Breathe in. The air's gone heavier down here, close and green. You're walking into the bottom of something the creek made.