The Arches

Two sides. Mighty. Locked in opposition. Brethren.

They meet each other in the air, bringing their immense weight together so that they are as one stone, an arch.

So it stands, and so it will stand for unknown ages above the desert.

Long before the Romans pieced their aqueducts together, the elements carved a series of arches in what is now Utah. Even as the stone and debris around these formations wore away, the arches remained, a series of unresolved arguments left standing because neither side would yield.

If one side conquered the other, both would crumble, shattering to so much rubble in the desert. The broken rock throughout Arches National Park is a testimony to one truth: all must fall, and even the immortal-seeming arches will not escape that inevitability. We certainly won’t.

Andrew going through a route

Dinosaurs left their footprints here. Now responsible human visitors must tread upon the maintained trails, or else limit their travel to the slick rock and washes where they won't disrupt the macrobiotic soil.

Amongst the massive stone landmarks, the soil holds life that can be crushed out by a single careless footstep. The grains of sand stay together because of a network of bacteria, fungi and algae — connections that can take as long as two centuries to build. That tiny, invisible cooperation makes it possible for trees and other plants to survive the desert.

Looking up at the enormous stone formations, I felt as puny as those microbes.  I was also exultant, exhilarated. The sight of the immense geologic forces told their own story, one that I was only a tiny part of.

I could try, clumsily, to understand the world sprawled out in front of me, but at its essence, the landscape had a meaning that had little to do with me. I was there to gape and pay homage to that immensity, to scramble antlike under sun and into the shadow of the red rocks.

The author trying out some canyon moves

Andrew and I took a path out to a series of arches then cut over to the slick rock. There were cracks in the stone, dark corridors where there was cool water, places to wedge our bodies between the walls and chimney-climb to secret chambers. We crawled in, took our pictures and crawled back out. The secret places in the rock were beautiful, but they were unnerving too and it was a relief to get back in the open air where there was no risk of falling off something or getting stuck between the rocks.

Far above our heads, the tallest stones in the park glowed in the late afternoon sunlight. It should be no surprise that we found ourselves climbing in that direction, just like moths headed toward the flame. 

We made our way by convoluted steps and random handholds in the stone. Every time we scrambled up to one prominence we expected to go no further. Then one of us would discover a convenient ledge and bring us that much closer to the goal.

After a final explosion of effort, it was all there: a desolated city, resplendent in the orange radiance of the sinking sun. The snowy peaks of the La Sale mountains were in the east.

We took a moment to hold in that majesty, but then there are some things that are so beautiful, magnificent and strange that you can never really hold them in. Finally, we turned back the way we came and scrambled down the slick rock to the trail.

We started running, sucked the dry air into our lungs, chased our shadows through the stone hallways,  abandoning the monuments to the dark and to the millions of years of crumble yet to come.