Two Oaths
The Arches Junior Ranger packet was still folded when Big opened it in the visitor center lot. Little put her page on her knees in the back seat and started filling it in. We had just watched the park video, which explains the whole place in a few minutes: sand, salt, cracks, rain. The packet wanted us to go find the evidence.
Arches has more than 2,000 documented arches. Some are sliver-thin cracks. Some span more than 300 feet. The NPS says the park has the densest concentration of natural stone arches in the world. The video did not prepare me for how close they sit to the road, or how much of the park you can see with your hands still in your pockets.
The land is the homeland of ten nations the NPS names. The Ute petroglyph panel at Wolfe Ranch, figures on horseback cut after 1600, is believed to carry Ute images. It is the one place in the park where a nation’s hand is on the rock.
The layer under it
The first stop was Balanced Rock, 9.2 miles from the visitor center. It stands 128 feet tall, a cap of Entrada Sandstone on a narrower stem, and the NPS puts the weight of the top boulder at 3,600 tons. We had been calling the stem “natural mortar.” That was our phrase, not the sign’s. The sign said the stem is Dewey Bridge mudstone, softer than the cap, and it is the part that is leaving.
The rock is not balanced. The softer rock under it went first. This is what is left.
Big stood at the rail and held one hand up against the stem, then the cap, then the whole thing. Little asked what would happen when the stem was gone. The sign had already answered. The cap comes down. The smaller formation beside it, Chip-Off-the-Ol’-Block, collapsed in the winter of 1975 to 1976. Nobody had to tell Big that the same thing was going to happen here. He had already worked it out and did not like it.
Across the canyon
We got to the Upper Delicate Arch Viewpoint in the last hour of light. The walk is 0.5 mile with stairs, and it puts you across the canyon from the arch. The trail to stand under Delicate Arch is 3 miles round trip and climbs 480 feet. We did not do that one. From the viewpoint the arch is a shape against the sky, not a room you walk into.
The rim around the arch was full of people. They looked like a crowd waiting for a concert, a line of small figures along the rim, and the camera flashes kept going off as the light went orange. The NPS says hundreds of people come for sunset. It looked like it. Big and Little climbed the boulders beside the trail. I took the picture from where we stood and then put the phone away.
Island in the Sky
The next morning we drove to Canyonlands. Island in the Sky is about 40 minutes from Moab, and it is the district with the paved road. Canyonlands is four districts: Island in the Sky, The Needles, The Maze, and the rivers. There is no road between them. We had a day and a half. The Maze needs a week and a four-wheel-drive. That is another trip.
We stopped at the visitor center, watched the orientation film, and drove to Willow Flat to see about a site. It is first-come, and there is no water. Erika drove the loop while Big and Little ran ahead to read the site numbers. We claimed a site near the junipers. Erika pulled the rig in and leveled it. Then we went back out to the rim.
Mesa Arch is a 0.6-mile loop, and the arch is 27 feet long, sitting at the edge of the mesa with the La Sals behind it. We took the obvious picture. Big and Little climbed the boulders beside the trail, not the arch. The NPS asks people to stay off the arches, and after Balanced Rock I had begun to think of them as things still in the middle of happening.
Whale Rock is the one that used their hands the most. The trail is 0.8 mile and climbs 141 feet up the side of a sandstone dome. Near the top it is all scrambling. Big went first and found a route. Little followed and found a different one. From the top the mesa went out in every direction, red and then blue with distance. I took one picture and put the phone back in my pocket.
That night we made a fire at the site and found we had run out of marshmallows. We ate the graham crackers and the chocolate anyway, sitting close to the flames while the light went out of the mesa. The cold came down with the dark.
In the morning we left Willow Flat and stopped at the visitor center on the way out. The ranger had the Canyonlands badges. Big and Little stood at the desk and said the oath, and then we drove down the mesa to Moab for fuel.
The sand hour
Back at Arches, we went to Sand Dune Arch. The trail is 0.4 mile round trip, and most of it is deep sand between two fins. The arch is low and close, not a thing you look up at. Big and Little sat down in the sand and did not get up.
They built castles. Little’s had a door and a wall and a moat she kept refilling with a cupped hand. Big dug a channel from the wall to the fin and watched the sand run back in. Then he built the wall higher. The hour went by like that, the two of them working in the shade of the rock while people came through, looked at the arch, and went back out. I did not hurry them.
The same process that took the stem out from under Balanced Rock was in the sand at our feet. It just worked faster there.
Skyline Arch was the last walk. It is 0.4 mile out and back to an opening high in a wall. In 1940 a boulder fell out of the arch and roughly doubled the size of the opening. The arch we looked up at was not the arch anyone saw before that year. The rockfall is still at the base, a short way down the trail.
At the visitor center, Big and Little did the second oath of the day. Another desk, different badge. The ranger read the words and they repeated them. Two oaths in one day, at two parks, for two different sets of rock. Big held both badges in one hand on the way to the car.
Downtown Moab was full when we got there. The street was lit and the sidewalks were busy. We got a table by the window. Little drew on a napkin while we waited, a rock with a smaller rock under it. The evening cooled fast. We ate with the windows closed and the street going by outside.
Where this happened: Arches National Park