Jonalyn's Watercolor Blog

People act funny at famous spots. In Moab, Utah, I found one case-in-point under the Delicate Arch.

World-Famous

I hiked the three miles to this world-famous landmark, pushing a stroller with my son inside. Hundreds of people were making the climb that Spring. Unified in our purpose to gaze at the largest free-standing arch in Arches National Park: the Delicate Arch. Pictured on all Utah license plates, Delicate Arch calls Americans and Europeans to choose this short hike for the simple reason that most of the world doesn’t offer anything like a natural arch five stories tall. Hollywood scouts have chosen the landscape of Arches National Park for movies as diverse as “Thelma and Louise” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.

How do you act around famous sites?

As we round the final curve, release our sticky son from his stroller, and sit down for the view, I notice the way people act. Most sit down and pull out a snack. A few (usually younger) people hike down to the arch. Some marvel as they look up the 52 feet, but most take a picture. Some pose, leaving their unique stamp of interaction with this landmark.

Can you see the one, young man beneath the Delicate Arch?

Under the Delicate Arch

The beauty and the comedy of a man raising his hands, flexing his suddenly puny muscles. The woman taking his picture crouches, perhaps to make him look larger than life? Or smaller?

Above them both stands the immoveable, enormous arch that humans have the audacity to dub “delicate”: perhaps to geologists, perhaps from a plane, perhaps to God. But to us limited humans at the top of the hike, this is a bulwark of strength. And humans are the goof-balls clowning below, flexing our biceps.

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“Under the Delicate Arch” is newly released in my Shop. If you haven’t visited lately, you’ll enjoy the new simplicity.