Back in Brian’s bedroom a thousand miles away in San Francisco, the wall calendar was still stuck on July. But it was now October. The national parks, such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, which appeared on the other pages, were pretty, but he had seen photos of them before.

The July page had taken him by surprise. At first he didn't even believe it was a real place. It could have been a scene from one of his favorite science-fiction movies that took place on distant planets. The ground was a color he had never seen before. It was not quite red but not quite brown either. It reminded Brian of the color of rust, except that it seemed to glow.

In the center of the photograph there was a rock formation. It was the same color as the ground. The way it sprang up out of the ground like an upside-down U, Brian thought it looked like an arch. He laughed to himself when he saw the photo caption, which told him that the name of rock formation was Delicate Arch.

"I guess it really is an arch," he said to himself. The caption said Delicate Arch was in Arches National Park, in the eastern part of Utah.

It looked to Brian like Delicate Arch had been carved or built by someone, but the caption said all the arches in the national park were formed naturally. They had been formed over millions of years and were made of sandstone, which is also called slick rock. The caption said the ground seemed to glow because the photo was taken at sunset.