Regrettably, we
were able to spend only a couple of days at Arches National Park on our return
from New Mexico in 2010. Driving into the park at sunset, we gazed at balanced
rocks, towering hoodoos, and natural arches glowing in the russet and orange
light.
The next morning
we took the wrong hiking trail by a lucky mistake, so we avoided the hordes of
tourists near Landscape Arch and Delicate Arch, and walked to Broken Arch by ourselves. Being alone in windswept
canyon country is important for fully appreciating its stark beauty. Edward Abbey was happy when he spent two seasons here by himself as a park ranger,
but dreaded the inevitable time when broad, paved roads would be constructed,
allowing many tourists—like us—to invade the park in their RVs and SUVs. In
fact, he felt no new roads should be built in the national parks, and visitors
should walk most of the time.
Though Arches and
other national parks in the Southwest are spectacularly beautiful, they strike
me too much as being Earth’s skeleton, providing structure without nourishment.
The parks I love most are rich in water, the blood of Gaia. Yosemite, Crater
Lake, and Yellowstone glisten with waterfalls, cataracts, and lakes or rivers
that bring water and nutrients to surrounding plants and animals.
Even Abbey needed
to leave the desert at times and spend time in forests and near water. Before
Glen Canyon was dammed to create Lake Powell, he and a friend rafted down the
Colorado River, exploring it as few since John Wesley Powell had
done. Abbey’s elegiac description of now-gone Glen Canyon makes it sound like
paradise—in fact, he said in Desert Solitaire that wilderness is “all the paradise we need.”
We still have
that earthly paradise, in spite of the crowded campgrounds and gift shops that
spoil parts of the national parks. It is still possible to pull on a pair of
hiking boots, walk for half an hour or so, and find ourselves in wilderness. As
Jefferson and others said in another context, though, eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty. We need not only to support the national parks, but also to
defend their wildness.
