A tale in the desert telling how to#
A tale in the desert telling portable#

We all sat down, and Eric fired up our imaginations with his stories of Moses’s first ascent, about how he and Fred Beckey had discovered it during an aerial reconnaissance of Canyonlands in 1970 with the express purpose of finding some good unclimbed towers. It was a neat place.”Įric fired up the espresso machine and made us steaming cups of thick black coffee. It cost me a nickel to make a phosphate, so I had fresh flowers every day. Fresh flowers also adorned every table because, as Eric said, “I gave a phosphate to the local kids if they would bring me a bouquet of wildflowers every day. At night, candlelight glowed on all the tables at the Tamarisk.

A tale in the desert telling how to#

But a teahouse in Moab-amazing! Eric knew how to do things right though. It was quite out of place for Moab in 1973, then still a rustic back-roads town not far removed from the post–World War II uranium boom and bust. The place, on the west side of the street opposite today’s Eddie McStiff’s brewery, had a twenty-four-page menu, over a hundred varieties of herbal teas, and a big brass espresso machine with an eagle perched on top. He has this really cool teahouse in Moab.” So, after greeting Jim and Doug up on the River Road, we caravanned down to Main Street, Moab, and stopped at the Tamarisk Tea House. Now Eric was going to drive us back to Moses for our attempt. Our sights were set on doing the second ascent of Moses, a proud five-hundred-foot-high tower that thrusts above Taylor Canyon in the remote western half of Canyonlands National Park.Įric, along with Fred Beckey and three others, made the first ascent of Moses in three days a few months prior in October, 1972. They had already climbed a bunch of towers, including the first ascents of Castleton’s North Face and The Hindu. It was spring break at the University of Colorado, and I sped over with Kurt Rasmussen from Colorado Springs to meet up with Jim Dunn and Douglas Snively, two climbing buddies who were roaming about the canyon country on a month-long expedition. I first met Eric Bjørnstad in late March, 1973. “There, Eric, you can fill to your heart’s content.”

I walk over and bring the box to the table. Fill it all the way to the brim! I like it full. “It has fewer calories than any other wine,” Eric says, looking into the mug. Back at the campfire, I hand it to him, saying, “Only the finest box wine-Franzia.” I walk over to Eric’s old white Ford Explorer and pour some wine in his black mug at the back of my truck. “Would you like the first one?” I ask Eric. Shove it in the fry pan and let it simmer. Rosarita refried beans fresh from a can, extrasharp yellow cheese, and sliced tomatoes all heaped on a tortilla. I prepare the first one on a cutting board.

I fire up the one-burner Coleman stove and turn the flame low. “I’m going to make some burrito supremes,” I say. I walk toward them, holding a chilled bottle of Fat Tire from the ice chest on my truck’s tailgate and a camp stove to make burritos. Brian sits to the side of the fire pit, legs crossed, his black-and-white dog, Easton, curled against his feet.

A tale in the desert telling portable#

Eric, his chair pulled against his portable plastic picnic table, holds a black mug filled with Franzia red wine. Two men sit in unfolded chairs, watching the show. Green (note: this story is published in Volume 14, now available)īanner photo: Fred Beckey and Eric Bjornstad after the first ascent of The Bride near Moab, Utah. The light, poking through a swath of blue above the horizon, sets the cloud bellies on fire, creating a tapestry of orange and gold and pale gray, and bathing Lost World Crag, a long sandstone cliff escarpment rimming an unnamed mesa in far western Colorado, in an unearthly glow.īy Stewart M. The sun’s last rays glance across the underside of a cloud-swept November sky as it sets south of the La Sal Mountains’ pointed peaks.