Bulging boulders balanced on the thinnest of rock spires. Flabby towers that threaten to topple, or even melt, under their own weight. It looks like God's childhood sandbox. Lit like a glowing red cauldron, Arches National Park in southeastern Utah is known for its monumental rock formations. Geologists tell us this dramatic scenery was formed by millions of years of erosion, sedimentation and shifting faults in the earth.
Arches inspires the imagination.
There are sleek stone gateways, as smooth as if chipped by an artist's tools. There are lumpy, drippy skyscrapers, which seem to be squeezed out of still-wet clay by moist, dimpled fingers. There are amorphous globs that could be the building blocks of the human body. I've always pictured the Garden of Eden as a lush, emerald green tropical rainforest, dripping with dew and buzzing with bugs and birds. If the landscape of Arches doesn't inspire metaphysical reflections, the names of its trails will.