Deserted Solitaire

If a person has a bucket list it is a good idea to make sure there is a hole where the items can escape as you check them off, sort of like a sipe spring that filters out of a canyon wall. I have had an item on my bucket list for about 30 years, even before I knew I had a bucket I might someday have to kick – to visit Arches National Park in Utah.

Last week Jan and I made the pilgrimage and got a major checkmark along the Adventure Trail of The Road Less Traveled. The mythical Arches destination has fueled much of the artwork on this site. Jan and I have had a picture of Delicate Arch in the bedroom through three houses and almost 23 years marriage that originated in a calendar I had from bachelor days. Affordable Art is in the eye of the beholder.

I made first passing acquaintance with Arches from the old Westerns that used the hard country around Moab, UT as a backdrop for many a Saturday afternoon shoot ‘em up. My formal introduction and education was through a book shared by Chuck Richardson, my personal outdoor spiritual guide. The book was Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire”.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Give a man a book and you can feed his imagination for decades if he doesn’t starve to death because he wasn’t taught to fish. Thankfully, Chuck taught me to fish a little bit also on the Tellico River.

Abbey spent two summers as a seasonal Park Ranger in Arches and let the experience trigger some of the best prose I’ve encountered since Ole Will Shakespeare wrote about Denmark. His description about life among the big rocks and bigger sky created an itch that has begged to be scratched for a long time.

Marriage blessed me with a Pennsylvania wife who inexplicably embraced not only me but my love for the desert, with plants that hate people trying to garden them as well and Cowboy and Indian décor that sticks out like a sore thumb in Tennessee. Actually, when you have to trim cactus you are often plagued with sore thumbs. Jan has known of my Arches hankering for a long time and when we determined to take a quick trip between Valentines and our Leap Year Day anniversary that won’t exist this year, a trip out west made sense. We had to go and get back before the birth of our first new grandchild in 16 years.

So here we were last week, tooling along I-70 across Colorado, passing up the Aspen and Vail ski resorts where everyone else was headed, listening to Abbey’s Desert Solitaire downloaded to Audible on my phone. Old Ed was droning through the rental car Bluetooth speakers like a baritone lullaby. Obviously I married a patient, forgiving woman. Then a strange thing happened that surprised me. I had to switch Abbey off as we pulled into Grand Junction, CO for the night. I found myself disagreeing with him because he was being so disagreeable. He was basically telling me not to come for my reasons weren’t pure.

Abbey is the patron literary saint of introverts, loners, back country hikers, Hole In The Wall Gang descendants and 20-something idealists. The fact “Solitaire” is in the book title foreshadows that this is going to be a book about living life off the grid, a Thoreau experience without a pond or drop of water in sight.

In my 20s I had embraced this ideal when I read the book, but I realized as I listened to the narration that while my basic values haven’t shifted my perspective was more forgiving than what Abbey was espousing. Abbey has a section in about Chapter 7 where he has an encounter with a surveying crew mapping to bring pavement to the pristine wilderness that is Abbey’s Arches. In about ten thousand words he basically condemns these guys and their masters as well as anyone in the future who will follow the cursed pavement to burn in The Devil’s Garden at The Arches. Something quite possible in July.

I realize as we blast along through the Colorado night that I’m planning on following the surveyors track the next day and Abbey may come to haunt me somewhere on the beaten path. Abbey’s sentiments are his own brand of elitism and he could be inviting me to fit the lines to a James McMurtry song I’ve always liked:

“They say I should of been here, back about 10 years before it got ruined by people like me…”

People like me. If Abbey had his way The Arches would have rolled up sidewalks 50 years ago. What he missed is the people on the pavement have as much right as he did to The Arches as long as they don’t litter. Not everyone can unplug from the internet and cell phones and go be a park ranger to gather solitude to write for a living. Some of us have to do other things to make a living and steal time and donate money for airplanes and rental cars to carve out a day of magic at The Arches. Besides, my Indian forebears would have considered Abbey an interloper with his travel trailer full of mice and snakes.

We arrived at The Arches late morning and were immediately struck by the majesty of the landscape. This is where God goes to carve out awe in mankind. Looking at the giant sandstone and granite monoliths makes a person feel as small and insignificant as lying on their back and counting stars and planets on a summer night. Scientists say this was all done by glaciers, seeping water and mighty winds but the religious can easily make an argument for God’s hand. Glaciers, seeping water and wind may be His hammer and chisel.

We started at the visitor’s center where we got maps and enough souvenir t-shirts and hats to thoroughly disgust Abbey. I flipped Abbey’s Solitaire back on, skipped to the next chapter and let him go back to his exquisite description of the area. We determined to start at Delicate Arch as that is the photo framed in our bedroom. It was fear of Abbey’s ghost that made us decide to take the hiking trail instead of driving to the point where Delicate Arch can be seen from the road.

The brochure said the hike was about three miles, which didn’t seem so bad. We walk a couple miles back home when the weather permits. Weather was with us as the sun was a spotlight illuminating the day to a temperature about 50. We started up the mountain, paused and took pictures at Wolfe Ranch’s two cabins, one a dugout and the other not much better except for the wood floor improvement. We marveled how anyone would choose that spot to stake a claim on their future fortune, but Wolfe came to area for his health after being shot in the leg in the Civil War. As good a place as any to lick wounds.

The path upward was well marked, hard scrabble gravel and dirt that was almost like a concrete trail, marked by rocks on each side pounded into the ground. That was just the first 20% of the trail and designed to lure an unsuspecting hiker onward. It wasn’t long before the path gave way to the trademark red rock which led ever upward. Upward and forever being the key words.

It wasn’t long before we were both puffing and wondering exactly where the end point might lie. We met and inquired of pilgrims on their way down and all assured us the climb was worth it and Delicate Arch was just up ahead. I’m not sure who paid them to say that, but they were convincing enough for us to continue. We kept ascending, stepping carefully, for a face plant on this surface wouldn’t have been pretty.

One young couple advised us to pay attention to the piles of rocks called Cairns, which mark the trail. They hadn’t and had gotten off track and had to take a long horizontal route to get to the destination. This turned out to be welcome advice as we ascended toward “over there” and “just a little further”.

The last leg wound around a mountain face on a ledge, pretty wide and sloping toward the face like a NASCAR track to put gravity on your side, but still close enough to the valley floor below to bring on my acrophobia. At long last, we reached the summit and were able to see the Delicate Arch on the other side. All the people who had said the view was worth it hadn’t lied.

We were feeling pretty gassed but still jazzed by the accomplishment of reaching the summit at our advanced 62 years. Our puffing chests deflated a bit at meeting a 78 year old lady who welcomed us to the top. We relied on the kindness of a stranger to take our picture at the summit with Delicate Arch in the background.

The trip down wasn’t as strenuous although the calves cried at being hyper extended to keep us upright. We reached the bottom and veered to make the loop to gaze at the petroglyphs left by the ancient Anasazi Indians. There were two groups of children gathered around park rangers, one explaining the petroglyphs and the other showing pottery. All told we saw five Rangers and only one was a man. The strange thought crossed my mind that if there were to be a second coming of Abbey the writer ranger would likely be a woman.

We sat down on a rock and pulled out our lunch of leftover hummus, chips and fruit and marveled at how tired we were after only a three mile hike. We checked our GarminFits and were amazed to discover we had walked six miles, three straight up and three straight down. Obviously, we can’t read a map or brochure.

After determining we had gotten sufficient exercise to satisfy even the absent Mr. Abbey, we decided to see all the rest of the arches from the road. I realized Abbey would probably protest, so I summoned EmmyLou Harris & Rodney Crowell to drown out any scolding we might have encountered from the old ranger’s Audible book.

Abbey’s ode to solitude still resonates and his amazing description still only scratched the surface of the awe and majesty that is Arches National Park. The experience underlined something I had probably known all along but had escapted Abbey: the best exploring is done when there is someone to share a vista from the top of a Utah mountain. I’m blessed by companionship of a woman who embraces my vague yearnings to see places I’ve never been and good sport enough to set out ever upward and onward toward wild treks. A bucket list item is best crossed off with someone you love.

Edward Abbey might not understand, but he was writing as a young man. Young men are able to pay homage to the dramatic, see the world in black in white absolutes because they have no inkling of the existence of a bucket. A man of a certain age sees the grays of life and knows of the bucket and the fact there are only so many drops left. We’re grateful for the paved road that allows us to still see beauty when the flesh is weak and hiking is no longer an option.

Even on the road less travelled, pavement can still get you there.