Sandstone Canyon is easy to miss if you’re moving too fast. It branches off Fish Creek Wash without much announcement. A sign. A turn. If you weren’t already in the mood to slow down, you’d keep going.
Once you’re inside, the walls come up quickly. Fifty, maybe seventy feet. The wash is still sand and crushed dirt, still not what anyone would call technical, but there isn’t much extra space. You notice that right away. The way the canyon quietly narrows your choices.
We’re used to places that reward momentum. Sandstone doesn’t. It rewards paying attention. And not just in the “don’t hit anything” sense. This is a canyon that took millions of years to become a canyon. The walls hold light differently depending on the time of day. The color shifts as you move. If you’re only focused on getting through it, you miss most of what’s actually there.
Most of the time, you’re moving slowly through it a little stunned, watching the walls change and trying to take in how improbable it all is.
Every so often, you have to wait for someone coming the other way, or ease past a narrow section. That part isn’t difficult. It just makes it very clear that you don’t get to decide the pace.
Most days, you do.
In normal life, days are mostly a series of things to get through. The goal becomes finishing. Clearing. Moving on. You move from one thing to the next at a speed that feels efficient and, over time, becomes automatic.
Nothing is wrong, exactly. You’re just always moving. And living at that speed flattens things. Even good days start to feel thin.
Out in Sandstone, that’s harder to maintain. The canyon keeps interrupting you. The walls keep catching the light. The scale of it keeps insisting that you’re moving through something that does not care how quickly you’re trying to get to the end.
You leave, of course. You always do. You go back to regular days and regular weeks and all the usual noise.
But places like this change your sense of tempo, even if only briefly. They remind you what it feels like when time has texture again.
And then, slowly, you start moving too fast.
Until the next place makes you notice.
Laura K Spencer, Ed.D. 