Ascent to Nature's Canvas

I left Grand Junction in the evening, hoping to get to Moab before dark, but unfortunately that didn't work out too well.  I really don't like having to pay to stay in motels, but the campground I intended on going to I couldn't locate, and it was dark, and I was tired... so a pre-made bed and paper-wrapped soap it was.  I was a little hesitant of this Motel 6; A. because it was a Motel 6, and B. because as I was checking in, some people came up to the front desk and I heard them ask something about a strange man who had come into their room... Grand.  Can you say dead bolt?


In the morning I went to the Visitor's Center of Arches National Park.  Having arrived in Moab at night, I hadn't realized I was driving through the valley of a fault line.  You can see nothing of arches from the entrance.  All you see is a towering wall of red rock that is the mysterious barricade.  Did I do the Junior Ranger badge here? Um, yes!  Unfortunately the ranger who checked my packet the next day was a little more patronizing than the last and made fun of me because I had spelled wrapper without the "w", which I had to explain was because I had filled the packet out early in the morning before coffee and after a tumultuous evening, which I will get to, but I still felt like an idiot with him looking over my "pictures of a place you liked" and reading my "paragraph about an experience at that place". Bastard.  Go pick on a mountain goat or something.


If anyone is searching for their next vacation spot, or a little road trip, or a place unlike any other, GO TO ARCHES NATIONAL PARK!!!!!  Wherever you are planning on going next, CANCEL AND GO TO ARCHES!!!!  As you can see I'm slightly enthusiastic for this place, and I am definitely going back before I head home.  

As I crested the edge of the plateau I felt like I had just ascended Mt. Olympus, left the land of mortals, and entered the land of the Desert Gods.  It is un-freaking-believable!  The landscape just appears out of nowhere!  Arches was formed from the disruption of solidified sediments, which accumulated on salt beds left over from the evaporated oceans.  As the salt moved and dissolved due to the water seeping through cracks in the surface above, the rocks moved creating the formations in the parks.  The arches develop because the lower layers of sandstone are weaker than the higher layers and so are more susceptible to erosion.  The lower layers of rock wear away or fall away leaving the arches.  There are also fins of thin rock sticking up in thick layers from the disruption of the earth.

The first formations I walked to see were the "Windows" and the "Double Arch".  Seeing an arch from a distance and actually standing underneath one are two size-mically different things.  I stood under a giant arch and felt like a character from "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" standing beneath a garage doorway, or an snail gooing under the root of a sequoia tree, or an ant standing under a croquet wicket, or a water bug floating under a fishing rod, or... well, you get it.  I looked up at the arch bending my head back until I could feel my skull touching my spine and letting my jaw go with gravity.  It was BIG.  The rock almost seemed fake it is so smooth, like it was part of a movie set, but its real!  

 

 The sand and soil surrounding the rocks is the same color, just the disintegrated version.  The particles are so small that when you let it run through your hands its feels like you're stroking velvet.  Animal tracks can be seen on the smooth parts of the ground from deer and mice crossing the human trail while following their own.  

And there were the trees again!  Dancing, twisting beauties living as definitions of toughness.   It took me forever to do the 1 mile loop because I kept stopping to look at everything.  The arches were so surreal with the pure blue sky as their backdrop offering no sense of proportion.  The blue sky and the orange arches sat beautifully contrasted an a display of nature's complimentary colors.  It was sunny and warm and wonderful.

See me at the very bottom??

I had an premonition of the arches someday being used as secret portals to different galaxies like in Stargate! I can see it now... A quiet desert at sundown.  Sand blowing with the wind.  A lizard blinks slowly while bathing in the final rays of the sun.  When,  BEEOW! A beam of light streaks across the land emanating  from the rocks.  A shimmering array of beams has replaced the space beneath the Delicate Arch, and a low hum can be heard echoing off the columns of stone.  It is the way.  The wormhole to the other side of space!  Ahhh... if only.


Back to reality...  I then walked to the foot of Double Arch.  It is so cool!  Two arches formed on opposite sides of the rock, leaving an echoing cavern between them.  I sat in the cradle of the space and looked up at the sky and listened to the quiet hum of the wind between the rocks.  A raven cawed and flew over the arch.  The rock lightly clung to the fabric of my shirt like smooth sandpaper as I relaxed and molded to the shape of the stone surface.  I couldn't help be think, wow, this is weird.  It's hard to believe any of it is real.

The road through arches is 18 miles long and is a steady climb the whole way save a couple of small exceptions.  The campground is at the end of the road and is situated atop a hill overlooking the distant land.  After selecting a spot which would hopefully give me maximum sunset and sunrise viewability, I unpacked my bike and my tent.  I was planning on just sleeping in my car, but since the weather was so nice, I decided to use the tent.  I mean, I had to actually camp out at least once!  The campsite had an area of pavement to park a car, but not really enough room for the tent too, but the hillside sloped down to a flat sandy spot where it appeared people had set up camp before, and I figured even with a sleeping pad, sand would be more comfortable and maybe a little warmer to sleep on than pavement.  From what I remembered about the desert, even if the day was warm the night could be absolutely frigid. So I was prepared to do everything I could to be warm.  I put rocks in the tent to hold it down and stood back to admire my handiwork.  That'll do I announced to the sand. 

I really really needed to get some exercise, so I decided to ride my bike back down to the trail head of Delicate Arch, hike to the arch, and ride back.  It was already pretty late in the afternoon, but I thought, what the heck, and went anyway.  5 miles of downhill later... I realized I was going to have a heck of a climb to get back to the campground before dark.  I also realized that it was a 1.5 mile hike to the arch.  OK, power hike time.  I switched shoes, buckled my helmet to my backpack and motored out.  There were a lot of people of the trail, which kind of surprised me considering I hadn't seen many people that day.  I think they were trying to catch the sunset at the arch.  I passed by some rather attractive park rangers doing trial maintenance and one of them said, "Biking? Right on! How far've you gone?"
I knew they thought I had ridden from the base of the road, or further, and not wanting to disappoint them with my actual wimpy-ness, I said, "Yeah, I'm just headed up to the campground."
"Sweet, have fun!"
"Thanks!"  It wasn't the whole story, but so what?  My solitary, recently-removed-from-college-aged-male-company self needed the ego boost.


It was like a scene out of "The Land Before Time".  The trail ascended past the rock shaped like a long neck, and past the mountains that burn (well they were orange), ran closely along the side of a mountain, and rounding the other side, opened up to a magnificent view blanketed in the golden sun.  It was more fantastic that I could have imagined.  Delicate Arch stands apart from everything else, a gateway to the canyons and mountains beyond.  It was immense and so much bigger than I had imagined; granted the only version I had seen was the teenie tiny one on the Utah license plates...  The afternoon light cast a golden glow on everything and I watched as families ate snacks, Asian tourists wearing heels took Facebook photos, two men discussed photography lighting, and three ladies with long gray hair talked and laughed in Spanish.  

It is a gem in the midst of the desert. And what's sad but special is that it won't be there forever.  Someday water and wind will have their way and the small cracks will become bigger and the arch will tumble.  It will be the Old Man of the Mountain all over again, and I feel lucky to be alive and to have seen both. It will eventually live in photographs and legends like all things that pass, and time will move on without it.  But both were once here, I am have shared a piece of time with them, and I am changed in some way because of it.  

I got back to the parking lot just as the sun was beginning to set behind the hillside (the cute guys were gone).  I then realized, crap... this is going to be a long climb... at high altitude... in the dark.  And it was! But I loved every minute of it!  Watching the sun set and the clouds cover the horizon while riding up a seemingly never-ending hill in the ever decreasing temperature while watching towering red rocks become looming black giants against the night sky is something I will never forget.  

I was hoping the moon would be out to give me some light... but it didn't rise until later.  Luckily complete darkness didn't arrive until I had reached my campsite.  I quickly changed into dry clothes and went down to the tent to set up my bedding.  I was all snug as a bug with my flashlight and book in the tent ready for the cold night and the damp of condensation on the inside of the tent in the morning.  I then realized that it was only about 6:30pm and there was no way I was likely to fall asleep that early.  I planned on waking up to see the sunrise and I wanted to get a good night sleep, so I just figured I would read until I got tired.    

 
I read for a while, turned off my flashlight, and snuggled deep into my sleeping bag warm and calm and ready for sleep, when I heard it.  It started far off in the distance.  A whooshing, mysterious and suspicious.  A ripple of sound came closer and closer when all sudden there were strange noises of movement outside the tent.  It sounded like something was circling the tent, and snorting from large nostrils.  I froze, my eyes wide open trying to absorb the non-existent light information from the tent.  I twitched in a freak of horror and disbelief.  There was no way something could have appeared just like that and be interested in my tent... could there?  Then the howling and growling wind in the distance warped across the land like a sonic boom and rocketed into the tent, sending the sides into a flurry of madness.  In the chaos I was both relieved that at least a bighorn sheep wasn't charging my tent, and completely taken aback by the sudden violent disturbance of the perfect calm that had resided just moments before.  After a minute of raucous blowing, all was still...  I lay motionless until I was sure it was over, and then sighed and tried to go back to sleep.  I had just reached the border gates of Snoozeland when it happened again.  I heard the wind careening towards me from the distance and when it hit, I awoke from the FLAPFLAPFLAFLAFLAP KERFLAP FLAPPITYFLAPFLAP of the tent walls.  This time however, there was rain.  It sounded like Zeus had just emptied his swimming pool atop the park.  I have this tent thanks to Ron Reynolds and Jane Kellogg and their infinite generosity.  It has been well used and you can see the thin layer of plastic on the inside of the fabric beginning to crack, but it has a rain shield so I wasn't really worried about a slight rain, but this was horizontal downpour.  I started to reconsider my decision to sleep in the tent.  Go freakin' figure the one time I want to sleep outside it rains...  But just as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped, and all was silent once more.  The next half hour consisted of me about to go to sleep and then the wind and rain demons deciding to hurtle me out of it.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to tough it out or wimp out and retreat to the car.  This was a serious consideration as the in-tent sleeping was intended to make me feel out-doorsy and intense as well as be fun and different and prove that I didn't need four solid walls and a roof to sleep.  Then the mother load hit.  It started raining, and it wasn't stopping, and those drops sounded big.  I held my hand to the side of the tent to see if the water was coming through, and I could feel the sides quickly becoming damp.  The wind was so strong that it was rocking the tent and sounded like it was going to rip the rain cover right off.  I couldn't help but think of the flash-flood stories of the desert.  I know that it doesn't rain very often in the desert, and when it does, the ground it usually so dry that the earth doesn't instantly absorb all the water, resulting in floods, and I was located in a bowl...  If it kept raining, the water runoff was going to head straight to me, and I did not want to wake up floating on my sleeping pad.  After 10 minutes of contemplation and non-subsiding of the rain, I decided to suck it up and move to the car.  I knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep with the noise anyway, so I rolled up my sleeping gear, put on my shoes, and bolted to the car.  All my bags were still covering the back and I flailed them to one side, threw in the bedding, and hurtled into the car pulling the trunk door shut behind me. Red mud covered my boots and I tried not to have a case of the beach and get it all over everything.  As I got situated, I realized I had planned on sleeping diagonally if I ever needed to sleep in the car because the length of the back is about 3 inches short of letting me stretch out.  But I figured out that I could flex my feet and turn them to the side to make them fit.  My head was basically laying on my bike handlebars, but I was dry.  I listened to the wind whipping around the car.  It was so strong that it was actually rocking it.  I could only imagine the tent being swept up and away and waking up to find it stuck in a bush somewhere...  It took a bit of calming down, but I was finally able to fall asleep. 


I woke up to a bright light in my eyes.  I cracked my right eye open to see a white light staring me in the face.  I looked out the window and saw the brightest moon I have every seen and Orion shining proudly.  The wind had stopped, the clouds had cleared, and the night was still and cold.  I sat up and just stared at the stars.  It was magnificent.  I considered getting out and walking around, and in retrospect I wish I had, but I put my hand to the glass and recoiled.  At that moment, there was no way in hell I was getting out of my sleeping bag to go out into that cold.  The inside of the car had already dropped in temperature and my whole nose was numb with cold, so my heat-selfish self won that battle, but even from inside the car it was a sight to behold.  


I had felt relatively rested when I woke up to see the moon, but have you ever had the experience of waking up 40 minutes before your alarm feeling ready to greet the day only to decide that it's just a little too early to get up so you snooze until your actual alarm goes off but then wake up feeling like you haven't slept at all?  That happened to me at sunrise.  I woke up, looked around, said "wow, that's pretty", and promptly passed out.  I woke up around 7:00am mad at myself and cramped.  I had wanted to get an early start and get hiking.  I grumbled, pulled myself up bumping my head against the ceiling of the car and opened the side door.  REAAGH REAAGH REAAGH BEEP BEEP WEEE-OOO WEEE-OOO!!!!   Holy $#!%!!! The car alarm.  I bolted up whacking my head on my bike as I frantically dug through my blankets looking for my keys.  The alarm echoed  through the campground letting every creature for miles know that I was an idiot.  I was under the impression that when opened from the inside, a locked car would figure that the owner was responsible.  Nope.  After what seemed like enough time to properly give every camper a proper civilized wake up call, I found my keys and jammed the unlock button.  I lay with my heart beating and again remembered that I'm human.  


I rolled out of the car and looked around hoping no one could really tell where that lovely sound had come from... right.  I looked down the embankment and there was the tent. Perfectly fine. Smugly staring at me in the morning light, acting as if nothing had happened.  

I couldn't face it just then, so I got dressed to go for a short hike.  I had yet to see the Skyline Arch, one of the largest and thinnest in the park.  It stretches 700 yards but is only 6 feet thick at its thinnest part.  There were already plenty of people on the trail, which just made me feel lazy, but the warmth of the morning sun and the sight of the incredible arch perked my mood and I returned to the campground feeling a little less embarrassed at myself.  I dismantled the tent, ate my breakfast of fruit, salami, and crackers, finished the Junior Ranger Packet, and enjoyed the blissful drive back to Moab.  

There are so many places to go hiking in Arches, that I want to go back to be able to do some of the longer hikes and have a second try at the campground...

I was excited to go to Canyonlands, which is only 35 miles away from Arches.   After recovering with some coffee from the Mavrick gas station (yes, Mavrick, I know, its great) I drove to the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands.  The road ascends with a number of fun switchbacks and before you know it, you are up high staring across old canyons from a height and perspective that is unreal and makes you feel like you should have worked harder to get to there.  From the Island in the Sky you can see the Green River and the Colorado river winding their way through the rock.  There is a 100 mile long road that runs along the perimeter of the lower level of the canyon that you can bike or drive on that I would love to do someday.  You can also see the remnants of old mining roads crisscrossing the land.  It's hard to really grasp how far down the river is, and the spires and cliffs of the canyons are just wild.  

 

I feel that I have only had a sample dish of that land.  I want to splurge on multiple main courses and dessert. That's what the Colorado Plateau is, Desert Dessert, and I'm craving more.  

This place let me experience a different sense of time, one that makes my life seem to be in fast forward in comparison.  My lifetime is but a blip in the life of a canyon, whose infinite evolution makes me want to slow down.  To some people, fleeting lifetimes and a sense of cosmic insignificance are unsettling and discouraging; but for me, it is somehow enlivening and a riveting reminder of a bigger picture.  Amidst political idiocy and selfishness, economic chaos, greed and intolerance, unnecessary death, education deprecation, and corporate monopoly it is comforting to know that there are some consistencies in the world; energy will move and change, the earth will spin, rock will erode, and, with or without any of us or our efforts to be important and successful in what we consider society, nature will run its course, indifferent to our comprehension or understanding of it.  I stand staring out as far as my eyes will allow and see the path of time from before my existence and the path of what will be the future after my existence, and I feel peace.