20 - Monuments, Navajo, and Arches

Monument Valley

Upon leaving the Grand Canyon with Bruce in’78, my journal made passing reference to our surroundings:

Drove through desert, some intense flatlands, with jagged rock rising mysteriously. 

This stretch of northern Arizona to southeastern Utah. featuring sandstone buttes as tall as 1000 feet, is called “Monument Valley.” It has been used as a location film for so many movies, that it defines what many people imagine when they think of the old West. 

            Photos from 1978:

And from 2018, starting at sunrise:

Mindblowing juxtaposition of rock styles!

           Much of this area sits in Navajo Nation, and it is common to see vast expanses of land against breathtaking backdrops, on which sits a wooden shack or a small camper.

Many Navajo sell jewelry and other items along the road side, also in rustic wooden structures that may or may not be attended.[1]

Arches National Park

In 1978, after driving through Monument Valley, Bruce and I stopped in a small town in southeastern Utah, so named for this sombrero-shaped rock outcropping on the edge of town:

We stopped in a Mexican Hat bar to play pool, then drove north. I slept in the car while W drove, originally planning to drive all night and see a sunrise. But the tape deck punked out, and when we stopped at a fast-food restaurant in Moab, we decided to camp out in Arches National Park. The owner of the restaurant told us it was cool, though his pretty blonde young employee said it was nice “only if you like red.” He (the owner) gave us maps and route information, and we drove off into the park. We camped in Devil’s Garden on a soft bed of sand, among the sandstone rocks and low bushes, and fell fast asleep on a cold, cloudy night.

Slept late and checked out Arches on a cloudy day. Took a short hike to Landscape Arch, 291 feet and seemingly ready to collapse. Numerous cool rock formations and forming arches.

There are so many amazing parks in southern Utah that Bruce and I missed, so I am grateful to that fast food restaurant owner for telling us about Arches, or we may have driven past that one as well. Inexplicably, either Bruce did not take photos there, or they are lost. Here are some from other sources, including my 2018 visit:

Landscape Arch

Three Gossips (near center, just left of the road)

Windows Arches

Double Arch

Balanced Rock

Delicate Arch, with me dressed like a kindergartner

Celebrating a hike with a beverage.

Author Edward Abbey spent two years in the late 1950’s as a park employee at Arches, residing in a “little tin government house trailer” near what is now Balanced Rock. His book “Desert Solitaire,” which a friend graciously gave me in advance of my trip, is a fascinating read for those who want a glimpse of a far less developed America, and what was then called Arches National Monument.

Abbey described Balanced Rock as “3500 tons of seamless Entrada sandstone perched on a ridiculous, inadequate pedestal of the Carmel formation, soft and rotten stone eaten away by the wind, deformed by the weight above.” He predicted that “One of these days that rock is going to fall – in ten, fifty, or five hundred years.” He also surmised that Delicate Arch would “soon disintegrate into a chaos of falling rock.” Both are still standing, although a much smaller outcropping near Balanced Rock, named “Chip Off the Old Block,” collapsed in the winter of 1975-1976. Landscape Arch also remains strong, despite my 1978 doubts.

A fierce environmentalist, Abbey railed against what he called “industrial tourism” and the proposal to install paved roads and other development at Arches. He called for banning cars, demanding that tourists be made to walk, ride horses, or use bicycles.

He brushed off foreseen criticism: “What about children? What about the aged and infirm? Frankly, we need waste little sympathy on these two pressure groups. Children too small to ride bicycles and too heavy to be borne on their parents’ backs need only wait a few years … the aged merit even less sympathy: after all they had the opportunity to see the country when it was still relatively unspoiled.” (Abbey then relented slightly from his own position, allowing the possibility of shuttle buses for the “old” and “sickly.”)

Colorado

Bruce and I drove east from Arches, encountering cliffs, more sandstone and flatlands with low scrub, and then - as we entered Colorado - mountains with gold trees and rivers adding to the landscape. But this is what we chose to photograph instead:

           We sometimes played a game to see how long we could keep the car in neutral until its speed dipped below 30 MPH: Kept cruising over the mountains – 11.4 mile coast from a 12,000 foot peak.

I paid more photographic attention to the transformation of landscape in my 2018 redux:

           And arrived in Colorado, on my way to revisit beloved Boulder.

           Next: Boulder, Colorado – are we here to stay?

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[1] After an excellent lunch, I wrote a little about Navajo history, against the backdrop of the development of Navajo fry bread to supplant their traditional reliance on agriculture, here: (url coming soon)

Pork Chile Verde with Navajo Fry Bread

Photo credits: Mexican Hat, Landscape Arch, and Windows Arches from Wikipedia; all others from Bruce in 1978 or myself in 2018.