SOMETIMES YOU NEED a hit of solitude to ratchet down what's important in life. So naturally, I keep handy a list of emergency places wild enough to get lost in. My most frequent escape route leads into the remote canyons running south into the Colorado River near the confluence with the San Juan, a maze of lonely mesas accessible year-round to a determined trekker.

If you were to ride with an eagle (or a condor) soaring high above, the Escalante might look like the branches of an ancient tree or the circulatory drainage of the human heart. This land is shaped by the way water runs. There's one branch in particular that runs through my days like the blood in my own veins.

Edward Abbey first introduced me to this rich, untrammeled country. In the spring of 1971, we dropped off the north side of the Kaiparowits Plateau into the lower canyons of the Escalante River, backpacked down a branch to the main artery, then climbed out another. Humbled by the immense scale, we started exploring, bushwhacking for days up smaller canyons that gnawed north into the high country. We found the canyon at the end of our trip; a tiny, clear creek trickled out between sheer sandstone walls. Sipping whiskey and smoking cheap cigars around a piñon fire, we vowed to come back and explore its length.

Time passed, we buried Ed, and I started exploring the maze of canyons by myself. Years later, I found and reburied a 13,000-year-old spear point used by ancient people to hunt mammoth. I looked around, thinking the topography must look exactly like it did when saber-tooth cats prowled the land. What was it that drew those elephant hunters down into these canyons? Could it have been the same timeless lure that bit me and Ed on the ass just yesterday?