I'm torn, as always.
I want the parks to be accessible. They belong to the people, after all. But dammit, I can't help but feel like the people don't deserve them. I know it's selfish to want this beauty all to myself, but is it selfish to want wilderness to remain... well, wild? The real beauty of it, to me and many others, is in that wildness. We crave the remote, the challenging, the solitary. We don't want to just marvel at nature from a roadside pull-off; we want to feel a part of it, which is what in turn makes us feel more human, more alive.
The Arches National Park I'm sitting in right now is a far cry from Abbey's Place; it's probably the one he saw in his very worst nightmares. Throngs of people crowd every overlook and crosswalk on the highway-speed, fully paved entry road. What I would call a "trail," Arches must call a "primitive trail;" what Arches labels a "trail" is more like a cattle run.
And I can see why they have to do things that way: they're trying to scare people off. On the Devil's Garden Primitive Trail, four separate groups told me they'd lost the trail over the slickrock, one man and his daughter for nearly two hours. Another group told me I had "about ten miles" left on a 7.2 mile loop trail; "we've been walking forever," they lamented. One man, sitting, simply said "it's hotter than I thought it would be out here." I gave him some of my water, since he hadn't brought any with him.
Every trail here feels like a pilgrimage to the shrine of instagram. I say this with no malice. I love social media, and I've taken plenty of photos myself. But my preference is for a wholly different experience--the kind where I have to keep my phone turned off in case I need to make an emergency call three days from now; where I can't always hear the chatter of people bouncing off of the smooth walls of the natural amphitheaters, giant concert halls with phenomenal acoustics echoing back the words for "say cheese!" in every language.
We stand before a flash flood of change right now--no, not a flash flood, something wrought by our own hands--a busted dam, a broken levy. Who can say what kind of world will be left behind, or who among us will be there to see it. And so who am I to deny others this taste of awe, whatever small dose they want to take of the thing that we are all starving for, whether we know it or not?
There are still brief moments of desert solitaire to be found here. I'm on the Windows trail right now--or, rather, off the Windows trail. Where most people stop at the end of the pavement, and the more adventurous scramble up to the belly of Turret Arch, I've gone through the arch and skirted the edge of the large natural bowl behind it. Opposite it, at the top of a smooth panel of gray Navajo sandstone, there's a narrow crack between two high pillars of rock. I bouldered up to take a look. (Slickrock, by the way, is a misnomer. It's the grippiest stuff in the world; like climbing on coarse-grain sandpaper. You just have to learn to trust your feet.) I squeezed myself through the crack, taking my pack off and turning sideways to just barely fit, then stepped down onto a small ledge overlooking the western range of the park.
The breeze is stiff here. It tugs at my baseball cap, but it'll keep me cool on this exposed perch. Before me I can see the rippling layers of the Navajo formation and the short bluffs of the petrified dunes, can imagine the Jurassic beaches stretching out towards the basin where Moab lies today. A castle of red Entrada sandstone to my left; beyond those, past the park boundary, steep red cliffs lined with scrub; velvety light-green valleys of sage. The horizon is the Sierra La Sal. Their triangular peaks and steep couloirs are still completely snow-packed this year. I love looking out at ordinary vistas like this just as much as I enjoy seeing the iconic rock formations of the National Parks. The sweeping vastness of the desert! There's nothing like it.
I can hear the car-alarm caw of a crow behind me, and the wind through the scrubby pipe-like cactus bushes, and occasionally a yell or the roar of a motor in the distance. At least wayfinding is easy here: I just point myself towards the constant thrum of the road. And at the end of a long day--sweaty, windblown, limbs heavy with the comfortable warmth of honest exhaustion--it feels kind of nice to rejoin the herd.
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