The next morning I find a picnic table to make camp stove coffee, make my way to the local post office to mail a Mother’s day gift, and then I'm right back into the park. This time I’m headed to Tower Arch, nearly 2 miles round trip, a sandy hill makes the end of this trail particularly strenuous, then I round a boulder and again the arch is almost right on top of me.
It’s more of a window than Delicate Arch was. Standing alone like that, and the fact that I saw it first makes Delicate Arch the standard against which all other arches will be measured. An Arch Barometer if you will… While it’s different, Towner Arch is still another impressive sight to take in.
Rainwater trickled down a cack in the top of this massive boulder, after billions of years the water ate all the way through the face of this rock to create the archway. That’s a better way to describe it, and ‘Archway’. The red rock pinnacles on either side contrast nicely with the cartoon perfect blue sky/puffy white cloud combo.
I came out here with the notion of it being less crowed. Just to get to the trailhead I had to drive 8 miles down a dirt path through the martian landscape. Most people won’t bother, I figured, and I’m right. I see maybe 2 or 3 people but I'm still not all alone to be completely immersed in my surroundings.
“I’ll takes what I can gets” I think and head up into the arch. I climb all the way up and thru and take in the panorama. Breath deep in the desert air. The openness of this place, the freedom of my life right now. Like a deep breath in cold weather, I can feel it disperse through my chest and contemplate for a moment….
”What is it I really wanna do?” and the answer that comes back is “More things like this”. Keep putting checkmarks on the ole bucket list. It feels good…..It’s a thing thats fun to do, AND you feel pretty good after it’s done. You know what I mean? You’ll prolly feel pretty good after a nice run, but while you're doing it, it fuckin sucks. Just the opposite goes for eating an entire bag of Oreos….feels great while you're doing it. These Oreos are my one and only *chomp*, they’re the only thing that really understands me *chomp*, they’ll never betray me *chomp* and I’ll love them for always *chomp*. But before you know it, the bag is mostly empty and regret begins it worm it’s way into your little daydream, and not long afterwards you kinda feel like you wanna die.
Hiking while emerged in beautiful surroundings is an enjoyable experience in and of itself in my opinion. Yeah, your legs might get sore, you may be dripping sweat but those things sort of fall away when I’m immersed in such an awe inspiring landscape. Plus you get the added feeling of really living when you make it to the end of that hike and are rewarded with a unreal view, not to mention the endorphins released from the effort you’ve gotta put in getting there. I’m really enjoying myself.
Later on I do nearly 3 miles investigating Sand Dune Arch, hiking through Broken Arch, and into the park’s campground.
Sand Dune Arch is hidden inside a rock formation. I have to squeeze between two of the massive fins to get to it. It’s cave like inside, the fins are close enough together that fat people wouldn’t fit. It’s tough going, hiking through this sand, so fine its nearly a powder. My boots and shins are caked with the stuff dyeing me a dark burnt orange.
The trail to Broken Arch is a mile or so through flat open grassland with a hardpan base of the now familiar red rock dust. It’s the first arch I can see from a distance as I approach. The name is slightly misleading, since the arch isn’t actually broken, but there are seams through the rock at its apex. So it’s not broken now, but someday it will be, and I’m glad I got to see it before it collapses.
It sparks a thought, all this is temporary, on a long enough timeline EVERYTHING is temporary. All these rock formations probably spent millions of years buried deep under the earths surface until the laws of nature worked their magic long enough to erode the softer soil that surrounds them, and eventually pushed their way skyward, birthed from the depths. And those same forces are still working today. Right this second, as I sit here watching, they are meticulously eating away at every crack a fissure. And millions of years from now these formations will be ground back down to nothing, returned to the earth from which they came.
Delicate Arch especially. It seems the most fragile, which in turn makes it that much more impressive. As I said, it’s the one you see in all the brochures and websites. It’s what brought me here, and I can’t help but assume it’s had a similar effect on a lot of other people visiting the park. I'm sure there will be “Breaking News!” one day, out of the blue, that a storm rolled through with such ferocity that Delicate Arch will be destroyed, never to be seen again, and I’ll be able to tell future generations that I was there, I saw it with my own eyes, felt its surface with my own fingertips, and on a postcard perfect day in early May, 2014 all seemed right in the world.
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