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The Canyon of the
Wren The small Utah highway swung southeast and began its steep 1000-foot descent into the canyon of the Colorado River. I had just driven across the Paradox basin, the remnant floor of an ancient inland ocean. However, the excitement was somewhat diminished by the rail line and mining roads that have scarred the 1500 foot vermilion cliffs of Poison Spider Mesa on the right side of the highway and by what I saw on the left side -- where the map showed Arches, I could see only a few small rocky outcroppings. I glanced at the map and noted that the park is but 6 miles wide and 18 miles long. A turnoff led to a tiny
visitor center surrounded by a grove of cottonwoods. The steady stream of recreation
vehicles switch backing up a redrock cliff into Arches brought a second wave of
disappointment. Small and crowded! Then there's the full day trip: walk the paths leading to balanced rocks, windows, bridges, petrified dunes, and, of course, arches. Then drive right back out. And finally, there's the full excursion: drive to the Devil's Garden campground, pitch your tent if you can find a spot (unlikely!), walk the 3-mile trail (6 miles return) and look at the arches, return to the campground and drive out the next morning. The message from the signs was ominously clear. Not very big. Poke around a bit. Hurry up ... and go away!!! But, if Edward Abbey liked the place so much that it (in part) inspired his classic Desert Solitaire, there must be a little more to Arches than meets the eye. Where exactly did he roam? What inspired him? To seek an answer to this question, a hiker's first instinct is to round up a topographic map of which they have plenty in the visitor's centre. But, if you're used to lots of contour lines depicting peaks, ridges, valleys, and streams, the Arches map is almost a bigger disappointment than the sign at the entrance and the recreational vehicles. There are large spaces (I'm talking very large!) with practically no contours. Small, crowded and flat! When Peter, a friend, first visited Arches with me several years later, I walked with him into the busy visitor centre to pick up a new contour map. In his usual obstreperous way, he cornered one of the Park Rangers and demanded information about places to hike. Having by then spent a week in Arches for each of the three previous springtimes, I had tried to tell him not to bother asking for that kind of information -- but he was already irritated by the large number of "tourist-types" occupying the visitor centre. To him, it was an enemy camp, an attitude that Abbey seemed to share. In response to Peter's question about trails, the Ranger said, "Did you read the sign" "Yes," Peter replied, "but it says there's only one trail." I realized that Peter was just beginning to wind up and began edging toward the door. I was remembering the time in a Wyoming bar when he told a bunch of drunken cowboys that they were making too much noise. "Well, of course, there's the walk up to the Delicate Arch ," said the Ranger. "But, it can't be longer than two miles," complained Peter. "Two and a half and slightly uphill," replied the Ranger without blinking an eye and emphasizing the word, 'slightly.' The Ranger didn't exactly spit on Peter's boots, but he may as well have. "Why don't you at least produce a decent map? If you made the contour interval smaller, we'd be able to see the lay of the land," Peter retorted. "Maybe you'll want to try Canyonlands . It has lots of trails. Would you like the map" asked the Ranger. I recall a trace of a grin. Peter snorted, turned on his heel and stalked out. He glared at me as if to say, "Why the hell did you bring me here if there's nothing to do but drive around" "It's late," I told him. "Don't worry. Let's get up to the campground and see what the morning brings." There are, in fact, few marked trails in Arches. Their names entice, but the distances reinforce roadway tourism. Consider the Balanced Rock Trail (.2 mi.), the Windows Trail (.9 mi.), and Double Arch Trail (.25 mi.). Heavy foot traffic gives them a paved look and feel. They're full of people doing just what the name of the park suggests - bagging as many arches as possible before departing. This lends to the schizophrenic feeling of being out of doors but on an escalator in a department store at the same time. "So, why do you go year after year" I've been asked more times than I can count, especially by people who had been there and had followed the advice on the sign. As it turns out, Arches isn't flat at all. One or two V-shapes in the contour lines can signal small, wind- and water-carved canyons containing pinion pines twisted against red slickrock walls with desert primrose and yucca plants flowering in their sandy bottoms (called 'washes' in canyon country). We first found Wren Canyon (our name for it) by spotting a few V's in a set of contour lines that looked to be about four miles - as the crow flies - from camp. To get there, we dropped down into the redrock canyon just below the campground (no trail!). After a half-mile of twisting sandstone and small (but dry) waterfall drops, we noted that the footprints in the wash had disappeared. We were on our own! In addition to the difficulty of getting around the faults, it was also necessary to skirt the cryptobiotic cryptobiotic gardens spread across the caps. Think of thousands of tiny gnarled fingers sticking out of the sand and you have an idea of the shape of cryptobiotic soil. The fingers are a blue-black symbiotic crust of algae, lichens, fungi and microscopic plants that binds the sandy soil, making it highly resistant to wind and water erosion. Some gardens hold barely enough soil to provide for a single plant. Others have collected sufficient soil to support a pinion pine, wildflowers, and colonies of claret cup , barrel and prickley pear cacti. The bonsai-shaped trees and the contrast of the flowers and soil framed in pink, mauve, and white slickrock make each garden a visual treat. As we zigzagged our way northeast, we occasionally crossed small canyons cutting through the caps. At each, we wondered whether we had reached the outflow of the canyon we were looking for. After several hours we began to feel lost -- a strange sensation in a place that has only 6 miles of trails and is only 6 miles across. In time, however, a small red canyon opened in the caps. There were no human prints in the wash - just a single deer, a few lizards and some mice had been there since the last rains, which may have been weeks ago. Wren Canyon (and the other canyons like it that we found on subsequent days) is small in scale -- the opposite end of the continuum from the mile deep Grand Canyon, about 200 miles downriver from Arches. Yet, seasonal floodwaters that over the millennia cut Wren Canyon have also helped to cut the Grand Canyon. We were walking one of the high feed canyons of the Grand. As we moved up wash, the canyon walls grew increasingly steep. Wren Canyon starts at a small uplift (elevation 5500 feet), immediately cuts a deep, twisted groove in the sandstone and then meanders out through the caps to a wide valley. The valley, in turn, abruptly jumps several hundred feet into a larger canyon, and after uniting with several larger canyons, it drops into the Colorado (elevation, 4000 feet), 18 dry wasn and wet river miles from where we were standing. The Canyon Wren (Catherpes Mexicanus Conspersus Ridgway) is a small brown bird with a gleaming white throat. It's difficult to believe that this tiny feather bundle can let loose with such a lengthy song. As ornithologist Bent put it, "No song is quite like it, and when heard for the first time in the wild and desolate rocky canyons, ... as it echoes from cliff to cliff, it creates an impression that can never be forgotten." The wren's sharp claws are well adapted for climbing over the perpendicular and overhung surfaces of the canyon walls. This one bobbed in and out of crevices in search of insects and spiders and stopped to sing about every five minutes. In another mile we found a small natural bridge, an unexpected treat. Bridges are cut by flowing or intermittent water courses, while arches, found off watercourses, are created by moisture which dissolves the chemical cements that bind sandstone and which freezes and expands, causing the stone to fracture. Just beyond the bridge we found ourselves boxed in and stood looking up at a dramatic jump where water from rain and melting snow would occasionally form an 80-foot waterfall. Rather than return the way we came, we decided to climb out. In this area of Arches, a large number of thick slabs of red sandstone, called fins , jut abruptly out of the desert floor. The fins are the end product of underground salt deposits pushing up, folding and cracking the overlying sediment rock. Exposed later to the effects of surface erosion, the now vertical sediments developed into large numbers of parallel fins - each from 20 to 80 feet high -- too small to create a contour line on a map, but tricky to find one's way through. So much for Arches being flat! Using the sometimes bodywidth spaces between the higher fins and the tops of the smaller fins as walkways, we made our way up out of Wren Canyon, circled back and finally stood at the top of the 80-foot waterfall. Our four sets of footprints beneath the bridge were all that we had left behind. In another hour, we had worked our way into Fin Canyon. Its cairn-markers and many footprints told us that we were in a middle part of the 'one and only' 6 mile trail in Arches. We had been enjoying ourselves for eight pleasant hours without seeing a sign of another person, much less a footprint. Next, we connected with a short paved trail, and its accompaniment of people, that passes the 200 foot span of Landscape Arch . After the isolated beauty of Wren Canyon, the arch didn't merit much more than a glance. Emerging onto the pavement was like Alice entering the looking glass -- leaving the real world behind -- in the washes, fins, and canyon of the Wren. On another day, Peter and several others of us had been wandering, off trail for about three hours in another area of Arches when we met the ranger from the visitor's station. We passed him with little more than a nod. Behind him were only his footprints and behind us were only ours. He'd either forgotten that he had told us that this place virtually didn't exist or he knew better than to say anything to Peter. My guess is that the park rangers would prefer tourists not to wander off trail because of the fragile cryptobiotic soil. Under normal conditions, few things damage the soil's crust. However, human feet are highly destructive. When the crust is broken, wind and water erode the soil very rapidly. It takes 50 years for the crust to form again. Without cryptobiotic soil, few forms of life would thrive in canyon country. In ten years of hiking Utah's Slickrock Country, I've spent a total of 10 weeks in Arches. After the first year I thought I had seen everything. Then, I began to explore the bumps and twists on the contours. Each year brings new surprises - and revisits to previous ones. Some of the suprises are unpleasant, like the cattle that are allowed to trample the southwesten and northeastern parts of the park and despoil the water in Courthouse wash. By not building trails through the small canyons and across the white caps, park planners have retained the pleasure of discovery and exploration. Perhaps one day the political climate will be right to remove the cows. Is it an illusion to have a sense of exploration in so small a park? I think not. It's as important to have small parks like Arches as to have the larger ones like Canyonlands. Of course, Arches can be seen by car and by taking the many short walks to the various arches. But, windshield and pavement don't produce a sense of place. I may never see all the
backcountry of Arches; each visit brings a new place. And, this year perhaps I'll
return to Wren Canyon to listen to brownfeathers sing. End References:
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The
change in direction indicated that I was approaching 
The
wash eventually wound out to a sea of white mushroom shaped caps. They looked
like small petrified dunes, each about 20 feet across. The map made it look as
if we could easily cross the caps in a northwest direction. But, walking the caps
wasn't easy. The locals call the caps the 'brains' - because of their shape and
because of the many deep faults that run through them.
A
mile up Wren Canyon, we found a place in the shade of a pinion pine to enjoy lunch.
Next to us was a bed of sweet vetch in full bloom. Wild onion and indian paintbrush
dotted the wash bottom. As we sat, we were enchanted by the long descending song
of a Canyon Wren.
