Letter from Utah: Part 3 of 12

This post is part 3 in a series of 12. You can download the entire essay by clicking here, or you can read the serial installments as they appear.

Monday morning. A thin column of light shines through the curtains. Kip breathes in, out, rustles against me, that strange twitching you perform during dreams. All around us are the rumblings of water sluicing through the walls—toilets and showers and sinks, everyone shifting toward the day.

The movement of water is the constant of our trip.

Also, of course, the road, the sky, each other.

After breakfast, we set off for Moab and Arches National Park. Elevations in Utah shift like weather. One minute you are switchbacking up a rocky face to the summit, and the next you are descending into a craggy canyon, trees clinging to the surface, their roots gnarled by wind and erosion. Mountains next to valleys, stretches of nothing past junctures of roads. Wherever you look, there is the landscape and it’s complement.

Four and a half hours later, we arrive in Moab—my back is twisted into odd shapes by the drive, buzzed on Coca-Cola and M&Ms, or whatever other crap we have eaten along the way. The city fans out on either side of Route 191 in low, square buildings. There is some argument about how the town got its name—either from William Pierce, a postmaster, or whether it has some Paiute origin. Uranium ore was discovered in the 1950s, and the town boomed. A little less than 5,000 people live here now, with thousands of others passing through as tourists and outdoor enthusiasts—primarily visiting Arches and biking the world famous Slickrock Trail. It has become a strange oasis of hippie kids and crunchy, earthy types; none of it looks much like the rest of Utah. Bike shops advertise hot showers by the minute. Restaurants offer sides of quinoa.

The drive into Arches itself is extraordinary—formations like buildings surround us, made almost religious by the light, the scale, the quiet. We hike to Turret Arch, Double Arch, to Balanced Rock. We take the rough trail, marked only by cairns around The Windows. The temperature changes quickly here, the sun and shade performing drastic feats of disparity. At the turnaround, we stare into the distance, at the horizon. I feel calm. Kip touches my arm.
For about an hour, all of it uphill, every step, we hike toward Delicate Arch, certainly the most famous of Arches’ formations. Finally, at the top of the trail, after scrubby trees and veiny, red slickrock, sand and the heat—the chill of the wind—we make it to the last curved section cut into the side of the mountain. The arch appears at the very last instant, as you come around the last bit of the path. It is magnificent. There are a few other people around, European tourists and third-generation cattle ranchers from Wyoming—I’m good at eavesdropping. Everyone looks tired and satisfied. Everyone snaps pictures.

Delicate Arch is a peculiar entity, and there are thousands of other such formations across the globe. This one is 45 feet tall and 33 feet across, carved from Entrada sandstone by tons of water over millions of years. It is dazzlingly picturesque, so…finely balanced on the edge of the stone, as if some ancient monument to grace. It confounds the brain. Ultimately, it is here as proof of what? Of the power of nature? Of how randomness can be a promise of beauty? Of the constancy of time? I am tempted to mention God here, to mention some higher thing—this kind of wonder brings those words to your lips.

Our language is limited.

Questions only lead to more questions. The answers do not appear.

But a message does: Regard this moment. That you stood here.

That you were here together.