Horseshoe Canyon

Horseshoe Canyon – A Yet Kept Secret I sit on the western rim of Horseshoe Canyon. A collection, the Park Service assures me, of some of the most important and breathtaking aboriginal art in the U.S. I have just traveled 32 miles along a dusty and rutted road, one of the washboard variety, to get here. It’s an entirely different experience than that which I had yesterday, in Arches national park, where pavement leads the way nearly to the base of all but a few of the most dramatic arches.

I experienced Arches for the first time, perhaps unfortunately, while also reading Ed Abbey for the first time. In Desert Solitaire Abbey spends much of his time railing against what he calls Industrial Tourism: The idea that the national park system, at least since the proliferation of the automobile, has become yet another cog in an oil-based, consumer society where citizens are too lazy to walk, pitch tents, dirty their faces and hands. Well damn, here I am ready to appreciate the magnificence of nature and Abbey’s got to rain all over it. I’m just an ant, his least favorite creature, crawling out of my steaming steel cage to join the rest. If Abbey could see Arches now, not 50 years since he was the sole curator at the end of a long dirt road in a National Monument where only the hardiest of tourists dared to venture, if he could see it now he’d be nauseous with disappointment. I am, at least.

But here on the rim of Horseshoe Canyon I’m somewhat reassured. A yet remote and detached “unit” of Canyonlands N.P., the stretch of archeologically significant canyon was added to the park in 1971. Horseshoe Canyon attracts only those visitors with the tolerance for at least one full hour of jarring travel and heightened risk. The 6.5-mile out and back is one of the longest hikes in the park. Not five cars sat in the red-rock parking lot when I arrived.

Tomorrow morning I’ll make the trip down into the canyon and see the Great Gallery and other sites for myself. Tomorrow night I’ll attempt sleep while my mind grapples with thoughts of genocide, destruction and loss, but for now I’m comforted to know that there are still places remote and rugged within our system of natural attractions. There are still places where well-trained tourists like me forget to bring water to the middle of the desert because they assume anything marked with the ubiquitous little tent symbol must have a pump. I’m not asking for a pilgrimage every time I want to see a national park, but I am asking for a long, sweaty hike that will leave me parched, exhausted and fulfilled.