By the time I secured a campsite and drove into Moab it was 101˚. I wanted to check my email, find a cold beer and do as all desert dwellers do during the heat of the day: hide. The Grand County Library was lovely and after decompressing my camp fuel, so that it wouldn’t explode in the heat of my car, I found a desk and settled in.
By four, hunger and an urge, or perhaps a responsibility to see Arches National Park drove me back into the heat. Arches is lovely, the curve of red rock against Utah blue. It was also crowded. I pulled into the Windows parking lot: CO, NH, OH, CA, NY, NY and on. Tour buses idled to maintain their cool interiors. I filed out along the third of a mile trail as part of a herd who snapped pictures of each other, trail signs, and of course the arches. North Window silhouetted a father and daughter in bright tee-shirts.
I moved on. A spur trail lead to Turret Arch on the same manicured trail, edged in sandstone, with level sandstone steps where necessary. I turned left and followed the primitive trail, a footpath marked with cairns and the passage of hundreds of feet. At South Window, I settled into the shade and began to see time: the slow wearing away of stone by wind and water as German, Korean and French bounced off the canyon walls above.
The trail lead around the arches and below them, then wove back through the desert to the parking lot. Violet-green Swallows swooped overhead. I reveled in the illusion of solitude and arrived back at my car still restless, but glad, at least, that I’d come.
It appears that things have changed vastly (pun intended) in 30 years! And even more so since Ed Abbey wrote Desert Solitaire, a book that describes the silent majesty of his days as a ranger at Arches. Though paths be worn and crowded, thank god, or whatever, that sense of time prevails, and will, in the rock. After 30 years, I still hear the echo of ravens from stone walls, the gnats in the ear, the dominant heat, the noisy rhythm of one's own heart.
ReplyDelete