Today is my first day back in Reno after an Easter weekend vacation to Utah. While there, I was able to take a long-awaited trip to Moab, a small town in south central Utah near Arches and Canyonlands national parks that is hailed as the state's adventure capital. The area boasts unparalleled desert scenery, mountain biking, rafting, and jeep trekking, as well as having a large spackling of ancient petroglyphs and dinosaur prints.
Like most towns in Utah, Moab too finds its semantic roots in the Bible. According to Genesis, Moab was the son of one of Abraham’s nephews, Lot, through his eldest daughter with whom he had a child after the destruction of Sodom. The Bible explains the etymological meaning of Moab as being “of the father.” Moab is also the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in modern-day Jordan near the shores of the Dead Sea where the Moabic people lived as pastoral nomads. Other etymological accounts have the name meaning “to desire,” making reference to the desirable land which the Moabic people occupied. I imagine this is the account that the early Mormon settlers had in mind when naming the Utah town. One visit to the towering red sandstone cliffs along the Colorado River creates an eternal desire to revisit the place again and again. That’s how I found myself there, yet again, this Easter weekend.
Not being particularly religious, Easter, for me, had pretty much slid back to the status of just any other day. But its lack of personal religious significance has never prevented me from seeking a reason to celebrate- not for want of celebration itself, but for want of a reason to celebrate. And there in Moab this Easter morning I found one.
As almost a symbolic tribute to the Christian account of Jesus rising from the dead on Easter Sunday, I woke before dawn to await the rise of sun. The past few months of my inner life have been tumultuous, to put it lightly, and I’ve been plagued with the type of depression that comes with uncertainty and radical change. The constancy and certitude of the sunrise seemed, to me, the much needed reminder of the boundless, hopeful potential of that which has yet to pass. And in a simultaneously surprising, yet unsurprising way, it did just that.
If you have yet to see a Moab sunrise, put it on your “to do” list. Your soul will thank you for it.
