Intro

Near the end of a really long day deep in the Needles District of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, Sinuhe Xavier and I were heading out, heading north, leaving the Chesler Park region behind. We’d hiked the shadowed stone corridors of the Joint Trail, which isn’t a slot canyon but feels like one, where shoulders brush the walls as you slide through, and then we watched the sun set over the sandcastle towers that give the district its name. The morning felt long distant, and already memories of the day’s activities were rearranging themselves into new chronologies. We were tired, dirty, and content.

“Shall we use the force?” he asked as we rolled down the dirt road in his old Land Rover.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

He reached down and turned off the headlights. For an instant, I was blinded by the blackness and the two-track shimmering on my optic nerve and then my eyes adjusted and the world began to