The Citadel Ruins and a Speaking Silence

La Sal Range in Utah

Wildflowers in cryptobiotic soil

Citadel in Cedar Mesa

Citadel hike in Cedar Mesa

Ruins at The Citadel

main wall at the citadel

Snow is in the distance on the La Sal Range as we begin our hike to The Citadel, the last stop on our three-day adventure in Cedar Mesa, Utah. The sky is alive with clouds, stretching from peak to peak and exploding above us, making it difficult to distinguish beginnings and endings.

While Kevin and Pete take a path to capture photos of the Seven Kivas, Ben and I skirt around a trail bordered by slickrock and cryptobiotic crust -- ground cover that looks like clumps of dark colored material or tiny "castles", but is in reality a living organism. We are careful not to destroy the fragile soil with a casual footprint.

With the exception of the splash of red from the common paintbrush, yellow is the artists' color of choice with the blooming of the wallflower, showy stoneseed, and Newberry’s twinpod. We also pass a desert star, like a miniature daisy close to the living earth.

Pete and Kevin join us as we step out of the pinyon and junipers into the layered sandstone. The Citadel looms before us.

Back in 8th grade geography class when I learned about a peninsula -- a narrow strip of land surrounded by water on three sides -- I never imagined I would be walking on a peninsula made of stone surrounded by air, where one miss-step would send me tumbling off a sheer drop-off into the belly of Road Canyon.

"Hello. Hello," my husband calls at one spot and his voice comes back in a surround-sound echo, each reverberation a fainter imitation of the original. We joke that Kevin matches the landscape and if he gets lost, no search planes would find him, his very clothing choice an echo.

We maneuver the remaining slickrock toward a capstone that crowns the end of the peninsula. The ruin isn't visible until the last approach, when reaching for a handhold, I see it 20 feet above me. The ancient builders created four rooms without the need for any roof, because the sandstone architecture extends seven-feet straight up to the cliff overhang. The main wall reminds me of another ruin I visited in Machu Picchu, Peru, the alignment straight  as a plumb line.

We enjoy the great views from every direction before a light rain chases us beneath an overhang where an ancient people once sat to escape the elements.

In this place of beauty and mystery, our entire group seems to have run out of words. To say we are impressed is a gross understatement, so we say nothing at all.

In the silence, I ponder a people whose story has been lost, who can be heard only in the petroglyphs, pictographs, and ruins left behind. I remember the handprints of a community at Double Stack Ruins and the two perspectives I viewed at Moon House.

The trip has been a respite from a season of hyperliving, where I have crammed "one more thing" and "one more thing" into an overloaded calendar. The continual noise has worn me down, yet I realize it is a by-product of a life I have chosen to live in a loud, hurting world.

As the rain turns to tiny BB's of hail, the silence nobody wants to break continues. I can't remember the last time I sat with other people without any words.

A long-ago king once wrote that there is a knowing found in stillness. If you listen carefully, sometimes a place of no words can lead you into the very presence of God.*

I realize this is true, and later I write down the questions I hear in my journal after we stop for Navajo tacos and fry bread at a small cafe before heading home:

Is it possible I need to step back in order to then step forward?

Is silence the place for me to discover the words, so I can deepen the echo heard in Ancient Truth who calls out from my past, reverberates through my present, and surrounds me in my future?

Where in my busy world, can I make silence a priority? Why do I resist it?

I hope to return to Cedar Mesa where I discovered that a people who have lost their story still have a lot to say.

What does the silence teach you? Where do you find silence in your noisy world?

*Psalm 46:10