Day 13, Part 2: Thursday, May 4th, 2006
Arches National Park

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I want to get down underneath Delicate Arch to get a photographic perspective on it that I haven't seen before, but it's hard. The arch itself stands on the edge of an enormous pothole, and I'm in the company of about 30 other people, all of whom might look upon me strangely if I slip and plummet into the pothole to my death while trying to scramble my way around the slickrock bottom of the arch. So it looks like I will have to go all the way around the pothole itself, by crossing a ridge of rocks on one side of the trail that led up here.

I start to head back the way I came, but, before I get very far, I cut trail where I can look back at another, mysterious arch in the waves of sandstone.

There's another hole in the ground--in the ridge of rocks itself.

After I take this picture, I'm surprised to see another hiker walking up to me, on the unmarked side of the rocky ridge. At first, I'm disappointed to think that I haven't been so uniquely adventurous after all, but, suddenly, the other hiker blurts out something about how "confusing this is", and I realize that it's a little girl--maybe ten years old--who has lost her way. I take a break from my solitary wanderings and shepherd her back over the rocky ridge, onto the well-worn path that leads to the designated Delicate Arch viewpoint. In doing so, I find out that she's not only lost the trail, but her family, as well. I'm able to get her back on the trail without any difficulty, but I never find out for sure if and when she ever met back up with her family. Since she didn't seem too concerned about them, I figure that my work has been done and try not to let her situation bother me. But I still can't help but wonder.


Back on my own, unmarked trail, it's an easy walk down into the pothole to get a view from underneath the arch. From this vantage point, it's just possible to see the hole in the arch's shadow, dropping down over the pothole.

Down in the bowl, I can look up at a beehive's worth of weirdly eroded holes that are apparently known as "huecos."

Eventually, I get over to the other side of the whole thing and take the definitive picture of the utterly surreal landscape.

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