Early on Tuesday morning I found myself where pavement ends, the roadway cinched up with a horseshoe bend that’s edged by a hundred diagonal parking slots. Coming around that counterclockwise turn and past the trailhead, I parked next to one other car. The sky was crisp blue, electrified by unimpeded sun. Unimpressed air held fast to temperatures below freezing.
Devil’s Garden in Arches National Park is at the northern terminus of the maintained road, but the area is central to the essence of the park. When you read about the steps of erosion in the sedimentary rock, from “fins” to “arches” to collapse, there is a certain academic acceptance of the geological possibilities. But when you see these here in person, the academics are irrelevant. Holding a hand to the rough sandstone, the loose sand at your feet, you feel the impossible paradox of these. You’re dropped into a deep well of time, sensing your visit as a mere blip on the geological clock. A grain of sand eroded from the rock wall seems more consequential than my own presence among the red walls.
A couple weeks before my geologically insignificant visit, I’d made a personally significant break from social media. This was a deliberate disconnect to try to preserve the self. I had gotten to a point where antisocial seemed like a prescription rather than a diagnosis. I know I’m not alone in that loneliness, and even as I write this I feel a kind of guilt, as though I couldn’t handle the bigger world and my place in it. That’s an odd reaction, one might think, simply because without the self there isn’t much left. Except, there’s the rest of the universe that I need to work within.
Coincident with this, I’d been months into planning some work over my week of a spring break. (My university holds “spring break” even before spring begins.) This involved meetings with educators and guides who happen to live and work in the deserts of Utah. I wanted to talk and plan with those who have expertise in taking people outdoors and who are interested in helping me to bring teachers, present and future, into these spaces. So my escape to southern Utah was to make these connections with people face to face. In addition, I knew I wasn’t going to fill my days talking to people. An inherent part of the plan all along was to be out alone with sandstone and juniper trees. That’s how I found myself alone in the deserted desert parking lot of Devil’s Garden in the freezing cold. It was inauspicious; and it was glorious.
Later that same day I’d be by myself in the Fiery Furnace. This is a permit-only section of the park that has no trail through much of the terrain because you’re often on a rock ledge or in a narrow slot between fins. Generally, it’s a good idea to follow a ranger on a guided hike, but this wasn’t an option this early in the season. The trick, then, is to know which impossibly narrow crack in the rock is the one to make your way through.
There’s an interesting policy of the National Park Service for Furnace permit holders. You should make sure you’re careful not to leave any traces, don’t harm any biology (including a crust on the sand that is a metropolis of microorganisms), try not to get lost, and just generally don’t bother anyone else who might be in the area at the same time. That last piece—don’t bother others—is part of a larger ideal that the Park Service advocates: discover the space on your own terms. Because there are no trails in many sections, you might end up finding something that could and should seem new, like a pothole window above your head at the end of a slot canyon.
In one case, I’d emerged from a narrow crack in the rock wall to see a small arrow that designated where ranger guided hikes would go—a reassuring sign when you’re by yourself, the GPS doesn’t function, and all the passages seem obscured. Instead of following the arrow, though, I meandered between rock walls in another direction for a bit, finding a small plot of grass in between steep confines where water must collect. Farther along, the walls closed in, but there was a narrow ledge to continue upon. It wasn’t until I was immediately under that I could realize the astonishment of this secluded arch, wedged in at the end of this narrow slot.
I sat there in the shadow with my crackers and an apple and took it in. A few minutes later I could hear voices coming from the direction I’d come, but they never continued up this far. As far as I was concerned, this was my own novel discovery of this one secret, surprise arch.
In my meetings with people that week, there had been discussions about what we learn out in these spaces, under arches or otherwise. One of my meetings and conversations was conveniently hosted in the context of a hike to Hidden Valley, a hanging canyon that is in an area labeled “Behind the Rocks,” just outside of Moab.
There’s a reasonable but steep climb that brings the hiker to the hanging valley, practically pasture land about a quarter mile wide, grass all around, rock walls bordering the space. “Behind the Rocks” is an accurate designation. It’s flat and welcoming, and in a world hidden away and all to its own. But the prize is at the northern end where you’re brought up to a saddle to look down towards the Colorado River, the improbable sandstone walls, vertical barriers, and rounded petrified sand dune formations in the distance as you see the land gradually cut away. Still above, there are more red rock destinations, and upon finding what’s hidden away there you recognize that you aren’t the first person to reach these places.
The view from this perch inspires art, or maybe just the simple need to document a presence in that space. I imagine that this artist enjoyed the time here, taking it all in and documenting some story. (I’m entranced by the figure within the figure.) It’s like an blog post on the wall, but with broader appeal, even in spite of its inaccessibility.
On the trek back down the valley, we continued a discussion about what we learn in these spaces. What should we be doing more to help people—students, teachers, or otherwise—really learn something while their raft is on a stretch of calm water on the Colorado River or their tent is pitched in some mountain terrain? This consideration of space and what and how we learn from it is something that I was actively taking to heart, even in that moment. Sure, we get to appreciate the space out there on the river or in a field camp, but how do we make sure that they’re learning all that they can? We have them in rapt attention, nowhere else to go, with the subjects to be learned literally surrounding them. Shouldn’t we have some mechanism for making this meaningful in deep ways?
Two days later I’d be talking to an educator with the National Park Service who has a wide array of programs for classes from afar on field trips as well as an extensive program for local schools. But within all of this she made the point that she can’t expect students to come to grasp something as societally and environmentally critical as climate until they have a connection with the environment and land themselves. That is, there are deep and important concepts to learn, but these don’t have a place in our psyche until we connect to something simpler, more personally resonant. I don’t have a strong affinity for the pyramids of Egypt. They’re amazing, and the pictures might even show a great example of something that’s inspiring about geometry, engineering, or even simply the capacities our labor. (I just learned that workers on such projects were paid with beer, so perhaps the pyramids are a story about the influence of fermentation.) But we don’t have a sense of the value of these places until they are our own. A love of a single rock spire or an expansive vista or a solitary animal may not only be a gateway into a bigger world of learning, they may be prerequisite.
Or, it could be a love of the air itself. There on Tuesday morning, in the cold and blue and expanse, I’d set off into Devil’s Garden to complete the entire “primitive loop.” Nominally, this is a 5-mile loop, but with spur trails there are a couple extra miles tacked on. More important are the other features of the trek, as described by the Park Service:
The obstacles in this segment include difficult route finding, steep slopes, narrow drop-offs, and rock scrambling. Hiking the Primitive Trail requires crossing a pool that may contain water.
In my case, for whatever reason, I’d forgotten about the pool of water. So it was a charming surprise to come across it, as well as to find it frozen over. I was about to take a photo, but that deeply shadowed pit of ice is something that indelibly etched into my memory as I strategized how to make my way around its edge.
The trail’s description is accurate but inadequate. There are some vague junctions, turns that can be obscured as you’re coming off the top of a fin and figuring out which way to drop into a sandy path. Once you’re on the correct heading, it’s easy to see that it’s all, mostly, clearly articulated, but you don’t have a sense for that until you’re lost within it. You also don’t know how to look for cairns hinting at a trail or how well soles can stick to slickrock until your feet are there in that place. The notions of “sand” and a “wash” or “fin” and “ledge” all take on specialized, vibrant meaning when your feet are upon those features, when your person shares space with the geology. Fins are precarious and narrow, and yet they’re the perfect guide, either as you’re atop or between them. You just have to figure out how you’re going to find your way.
In all this, being lost doesn’t seem threatening. Within the depths of the route, having passed only one other person a mile back, I have an outcrop and the outlook to myself. It’s quiet, like a slow breath—not silent but improbably hushed as the air holds the scene together, and taking in the air is being a part of that present. The air, along with red stone and blue sky and everything in between, wraps me, takes me in. I, in turn, take in the air. And for that moment I think rock, air, and flesh are all of the same.
This unification is an unoriginal, if not timeless, sensation. Annie Dillard described the geology taking her in as well, as she described her mountains:
Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given. Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it…
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
There are those times when the spirit needs to be heaved into something else safe, and, ironically, perilous ledges and desolate terrain provide a cradle and permanence. Running along a wash provided an easy route and route finding for a good fraction of a mile, so much so that when a marker pointed me out of the wash and back up towards higher ground, I wondered where the land might take me if I stayed in the flow of the intermittent stream bed. How far could the desert take me in? But then, there was more to see above the slickrock incline.
It was on that last leg that I connected not just to the present, but to a past that also connects me to this land. I flashed back to my time on a section of this trail, my toddler on my back and her sister at my hand. Later, we’re sitting in the sand at the base of a juniper tree, eating strawberries, cheese, and crackers (with a healthy dose of red grit) for our lunch in the desert sun. That older kid leaves for college later this year, and the “toddler on my back” isn’t far behind. The jolt of this memory kicked me in the soul, and I nearly broke down in front of the German tourists emerging from the parking lot.
And so it is that the mountains take me in, and they also hold onto that memory and give it back to me. There’s a photo—so clear to me I don’t even need to pull it up—but in my memory I can smell the strawberry and feel the grit of the sand and the heft of child and food and gear that all rest on my back and hips. I remember the sun, a wide brimmed hat, and a small hand within my own.
Karyn took this photo those many years ago as we rounded a corner towards Delicate Arch. I cherish it because I know exactly the feel of my feet on that ledge, the hand in my palm, and the view we’re taking in. I know the drop-off to my left, the wall to the right, the girls safely in between. This is where we have left our spirit, where the mountains have embraced it and kept these places sacred; and this explains, in part, why we return.
In all of this, the expedition and the writing afterward, I’m rediscovering my responsibility and my contribution. Finding my way through in these outdoor contexts, I recognize that I can’t make connections for others. I can’t transport them to these into the ties with the geology and spirit of the land any more than I can throw them back in time. Instead, I need to help people make those connections for themselves. There’s learning and then there’s Learning. “Learning” is overused, a word reserved for all sins and graces, both. Trouble is, we often confound them. Or, maybe we’re oblivious to the subtle differences. In any case, I can’t deny the need for me to Learn from the landscape, both to remember where I’m from and who I am. And, I need to help others find their way into that learning. (I recognized this most profoundly with the solar eclipse experienced on a pass in the Wind River Range, and I’ve since recognized that this is the standard I should aspire to for all educational endeavors—even if that proves to be impossible.)
On a personal level, this all is a reminder about preserving lands, and in so doing preserving ourselves. My break from social media was a small part of that preservation, but finding my footing, going out in order to go in (to paraphrase John Muir), taking in air, these all made me remember that I could feel stability, focus, and wonder simultaneously. These virtues clarify the sanctity of space and of all those things that exist within it; and they justify the need to keep these scenes available for others in the future, both to learn from and to heave our spirit into. We need those spaces of respite where we connect and preserve ourselves—most especially me, my self, early on a cold, clear Tuesday morning.
