This was once the stomping grounds of the renowned Edward Abbey – park ranger, environmentalist, essayist. 

I should feel at home here, as if I were visiting the lands of a kindred spirit; I admire Abbey’s writing and understand his passion. But I’ve long suspected that he wouldn’t really like me or my kind much. An opponent of what he called “industrial tourism,” Abbey doesn’t afford much room in his big, wide world for people who can’t scale a cliff wall, hike for miles and then sleep on a rocky ledge. I – and others like me – have to be carted reasonably close to the places we want to see.

Accessibility is part of the public side of national parks, and while I don’t condone blasting a road through Arches to make the approach less winding, I reject the arrogance of those who would reserve it for only the whole and hearty. Besides, most of the national parks I’ve been to are pretty big. There seems to be plenty of space out there for those who want to wander off into the wild and leave the rest of us behind.

More – or perhaps less – power to them.

For the rest of us, there are the paths of Arches: Gravelly, dusty, twisting routes that are – as in all places where scale is hard to reckon because of the massiveness of the natural architecture – a lot longer than they seem. Plus length doesn’t measure height and depth.

The path from the parking lot (I know, I know, Edward – and I apologize again) to the long Landscape Arch may measure 1 mile distant, but the up-and-up-and-up-and-only-then-down layout of the trail belies the time and effort involved. Halfway there I wonder if the distance was measured “as the crow flies,” except the crows aren’t flying: They’re posted in a ghostly pine skeleton to the right of the path, chuckling ominously as I pass.

You’re supposed to pay attention to the sunlight when you visit the arches; some of them are better illuminated in the morning than in the afternoon, and vice versa. Unfortunately, when I get to Landscape it is already in shadow. Still, it’s a pretty impressive span of fragile rock and has only recently (geologically speaking – that is to say, in my lifetime) let fall some of its tonnage.

Of course I hope I’m there to see it drop some more; of course I do not. Still, only a few weeks before my visit, one of the park’s other 2,000 arches collapsed, emphasizing the passing nature of the place.

But it’s on the way back to the I’m-sorry parking lot that I get my best sense of Arches. The path passes through two rock walls; the lowering sun is hitting the higher wall facing west, which bounces light down onto the lower wall facing east. Against the too-blue desert sky, it is the perfect complementary shade of reddish orange.

Between those walls I pass under another kind of arch, both more and less permanent than the portals I have just visited: It is made of sunlight thrown by stone.