CMC’s Outdoor Recreation Leadership and Outdoor Education field program field courses are always deeply thought-provoking. This post is an excerpt from CMC student Dustin Eldridge’s journal on the last morning of a Southwest Field Course.
I woke up with the sunrise this morning. I’m especially glad because last night’s events were too hectic to record at the time. We were sitting as a group atop a mighty cliff on the southern edge of Cedar Mesa looking over the Monument Valley of the Navajo nation. It was after sunset; the lights of the reservation scattered few and far between in the vast desert landscape. A storm cloud, with fits of lightning and wind, was slowly working its way toward us. Cody was reading aloud a passage about the survival of the Pueblo peoples over 17 centuries. In comparison, our own nation is just two centuries old. The storm seemed to reinforce the message of fragility with lightning strikes punctuating each morbid detail Cody read. The storm passed us to the East, but gave us some excitement with winds, seemingly out of nowhere, tearing tents out of the ground.
The sun’s rays have begun to fill the landscape. The monuments, buttes, and spires standing miles out on the horizon have taken on schizophrenic properties; glowing red-orange east faces contrasting pure black shadows on their west side. Closer, the winding San Juan river canyon walls are bathing in sunlight where the other folds of the canyon are not prohibiting the sun’s light. Sedimentary layers in perfectly uniform heights encircle the entirety of the canyon’s walls. Thousands of feet below me, the San Juan slithers through the shadowed crevasse it has dug over millenia. What will be the legacy of the America of today? Will we learn from the lessons of those who inhabited the Southwest before us, or perish with the water and oil as it runs dry? I have hope fore America, but I also have my doubts. Perhaps a more egalitarian and sustainable society will take its place. America is just a name. The people who compose it, with strength and unity in their diversity, have come too far together to lay down without a fight. People will inhabit this land we call America forever, but it is our decisions now that will decide who, and how many, will get to enjoy the splendors of this great land.