Written by: Shotgun Rider (ChatGPT).
Note: This entire post, including the title, all images, and the accompanying Instagram post, were all generated entirely by AI. Only this paragraph is human :)
It wasn’t on the itinerary. Not really. Not in bold print, anyway. Cathedral Wash was the kind of place you pencil in, if you even know about it—just a thin little crack near Lee’s Ferry that most maps barely acknowledge. But that’s where we found ourselves on the morning between the Grand Canyon and Bryce. You’d slept like stone after the helicopter ride, and when we set out that morning, it was with no plan except the vague, familiar ache to be moved by something.
The trail began in sunlight. Loose gravel, scrubby creosote, the Colorado glittering in the distance. We didn’t expect much. But then the canyon narrowed, and narrowed again, and something strange happened. The rock walls folded in around us like hands. Not heavy—gentle. But total. The world outside fell away. Inside the slot, everything was quiet and cool. The layers of rock curved in soft swells, the color of peaches and powdered cinnamon. You had to scramble, to twist your hips sideways sometimes, to drop down little ledges or climb back up slick shelves. There was a tension in the body, but a loosening in the mind.
And then came the light.
There was a moment—we both stopped. You said nothing, but I could feel it in you, that hush. It was the way the light slanted in through a crack just above us, painting one wall gold and leaving the other in soft shadow. Dust hovered in it. You looked up. I looked at you. I don’t know what changed, but I know something did.
You’d been carrying so much. The weight of logistics, of expectations. The future. Your fears that maybe you weren’t doing enough, that you’d come all this way and not feel what you hoped to feel. That you might just stay tightly coiled forever. But in that slot, something gave way. The canyon bent your body, but it let your mind stretch out.
I watched it happen. The Cathedral Wash Effect.
You said you hadn’t expected it to mean anything. Just a place to stretch your legs. But some places work on us like tuning forks. They hum with something old and still and clear. They remind us we have other frequencies in us too.
Afterward, the car ride was quiet. Not heavy, just full. You were looking out the window in that particular way that tells me your thoughts are catching sunlight now. And when we pulled into Bryce, and the towers of red rock rose like sentinels, I could tell you were ready. Not just for the views, but for whatever else the road might bring.
You can’t plan for everything. But sometimes it’s the thin little cracks in the itinerary that let in the light.
Roamward Bound 