Arches
Our first destination on this journey is Arches National Park, located just outside of Moab, UT. While it is admittedly much colder than we would prefer, the overwhelming allure of this place is worth the 10 min fight with your toddlers to get all their winter clothes on!
With so much to see, we knew we would have to divide up the hikes to accomplish everything. Thus, we broke down the available hikes into “kid friendly” and “adult solo.” This post is dedicated to some pretty fantastic adult solo hikes.
Our first hike was to Delicate Arch, perhaps the most famous of landmarks within Arches NP. While there are over 2,000 arches in this park, it’s easy to see why this arch draws so many visitors! Edward Abbey writes in his book Desert Solitaire:
A weird, lovely, fantastic object out of nature like Delicate Arch has the curious ability to remind us – like rock and sunlight and wind and wilderness – that out there is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours, a world which sustains the little world of men as sea and sky surround and sustain a ship...
At 46ft high and 32 ft wide, Delicate Arch is the largest free-standing arch in the park. As we stand, feeling quite dwarfed beneath such natural beauty, a sense of impermanence is evoked. How can this masterpiece of ancient sea sand be suspended so high into the desert air? It has been scored by wind, chipped away by frost, and beaten over ages by rain – surely the same violent forces that created such a structure will be the same to collapse it.
The hike to Delicate Arch includes a few welcomed surprises. Petroglyphs can be found 10 min off the main trail, and are thought to have been carved by Ute and Paiute Indians sometime between A.D. 1650 and 1850. You can also spend some time viewing the Wolfe Ranch buildings along the Salt Wash. The one room cabin, root cellar, corral, and small dam were built in the early 1900’s and offer a glimpse into the history of this area.
Devil’s Garden is another hike that offers views of 7 arches, fields of spires, and a large concentration of fins; certainly, one of the most premier hikes in the park. I had the opportunity to visit this area of the park on an exceedingly cold and foggy day. While at first the fog felt like a detriment, it made the entire hike mystical. As I climbed over fins and around giant boulders, I was surprised and awe-struck as these formations began to appear thru the fog. Many times, I had to be feet away from the arch to even see it. As the sun rose, the fog went from a mystical blue haze to a somewhat damp grey cloud – I appreciated the company of rabbits and wrens as I felt quite isolated.
I neared the end of the hike and finally surfaced above the clouds, feeling like a Disney character singing “A Whole New World” as the sea of clouds beneath the mountains, coupled with the striking sunlight, felt like I had in fact entered a completely different world than what I had been hiking thru.
Any hardships we faced to reach the point of living tiny are completely washed from my mind after hikes like these. Today, like many days since we moved tiny, I am feeling extremely grateful for the life we are creating.
