I recently finished reading Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire," which is a memoir of his time spent as a ranger in Arches National Monument and the surrounding areas of the Colorado Plateau. For the first time, I found someone who could adequately express the wonder and stark beauty of that land that I love so much:
"Everything is lovely and wild, with a virginal sweetness. The arches themselves, strange, impressive, grotesque, form but a small and inessential part of the general beauty of this country. When we think of rock we usually think of stones, broken rock, buried under soil and plant life, but here all is exposed and naked, dominated by the monolithic formations of sandstone which stand above the surface of the ground and extend for miles, sometimes level, sometimes tilted of warped by pressures from below, carved by erosion and weathering into an intricate maze of glens, grottoes, fissures, passageways, and deep narrow canyons.
"At first look it all seems like a geologic chaos, but there is method at work here, method of a fanatic order and perserverance: each groove in the rock leads to a natural channel of some kind, every channel to a ditch and gulch and ravine, each larger waterway to a canyon bottom or broad wash leading in turn to the Colorado River and the sea." (Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire, page 11)
That natural order to the landscape can also be exploited for those wanting to experience something new, to escape from the dull routine of daily life, for Arches is amazingly accessible. The fissures, cracks, and canyons form natural stairways and hallways leading the explorer onward, upward, and through to exciting new terrain. There are few desirable destinations in the park that are so remote or difficult to access that they cannot be reached within a half-day's hike with perhaps a little creativity. Not that every fin and crack can easily be climbed or penetrated; that would destroy some of the mystery of this magical place. But I have been repeatedly amazed at how a solution to whatever obstacle is in my path seems to present itself in the most unlikely of places. I have often been required to walk right up to the edge of a cliff before the obvious way down, or full lack thereof, can be observed. It seems to me that the whole terrain was designed by a Grand Architect as a large-scale playground for children and grown-ups alike to climb, crawl, and marvel over the beauty of creation; to turn their feet orange in the soft, cool sand; to get grit into the pores of their hands as they press their insignificant weight against the masses of solid, sunburnt rock. So come and see, and enjoy some of my favorite haunts in this redrock playground.
|
