Barefoot Through Moab
The Delicate Arch. Moab, UT.
If Mars were a location on Earth, Arches National Park would be it. The sheer size of the rust colored mountains, or formations would be a more accurate description, is mind-blowing. What is this place? You’ll think to yourself on more than one occasion as the road winds and bends with the shape of the earth.
But, hold your horses, we aren’t there yet. See, as beautiful as Arches National Park is, and as much as I wanted to hike the Delicate Arch on our quick stopover en route to Colorado, we missed our window. The boys had ridden most of he morning at Slick Rock (a bucket list ride for mountain bikers) and my daughter and I hung out at the pool pretending to be crawfish and other various aquatic creatures. By the time we got around to braving the lines at the entrance of the park, it was sunset. We drove through the park and hopped out at some of the more easily accessible photo spots, but Delicate Arch would have to wait.
We bought sweatshirts, called it a day and left the next morning for Colorado.
As luck would have it, we decided to make the same trip the following summer. This time, we’d spend just one night in Moab and we’d be on the road the next day.
“And, by the way, we’re hiking Delicate Arch.” I told my kids.
“Mom, nobody wants to do that,” my daughter said with conviction.
“Well, we didn’t do it last year, so we are definitely doing it,” I matched.
“She means it guys,” husbands know tone when they hear it.
Pass holders for the park can begin entering at 7:00 a.m., which means at 7:00 a.m. the line to get into Arches can be quite long. If you don’t book a pass, you’re welcome to enter the park before pass holders arrive; it is generally suggested to enter at 6:30 or earlier. Knowing I would be met with grumpy teenagers, I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. and told everyone to be ready.
Despite grumbling and visible frustration, we made it out the door and at the park before sunrise. Which was perfect.
That is, until my daughter got a blister. In her sleepy stupor just an hour earlier, she picked the wrong pair of socks for hiking boots. She was miserable and we were halfway up. A kind stranger gave us a bandaid, which offered temporary relief, but soon the bandage became moist with sweat and rubbed even more on the already tender spot on my daughters heel. Frustration became anger which then became protest.
“I’m not finishing, leave me here. I can go back to the car,” she said.
“Let’s keep going. You can borrow my socks,” I said - we were so clooooose!
She did NOT want my socks.
We were stuck between a rock and … well, we were just surrounded by rocks. Lots of big, red, but actually quite smooth rocks.
“Hey, let’s just take off our shoes and see if it feels better,” I suggested.
After minutes of silent refusal and holding back tears, she begrudgingly agreed. We both took our shoes and socks off as others either shook their heads, laughed or said “woah! look, they don’t have any shoes!” We did look ridiculous, but we stayed on the path, the ground was smooth and we discovered that where the rocks had turned to sand and dust, there were long patches of soft, cool, red-colored powder.
“Mom! It feels so soft on the sand, come put your feet in here!” my daughter said with delight.
I obliged, and she was right, the sand was cool and soft between my toes.
Without the burden of shoes or blisters or soggy bandaids, the beauty that surrounded us came into focus.
As did the poignancy of this moment.
We made it to the Delicate Arch with almost a hundred other hikers. We marveled at the massive structure, and tried to make our best guess as to how it was formed. And as we hiked back down barefoot, my daughter and I held hands. We knew we’d done something hard - physically, mentally and emotionally. We knew we had a chance to quit and didn’t. We knew we’d been in the presence of a natural wonder.
And we knew there’d be more soft, red, cool, powdery sand to sink our toes into on the way down.
