Brian thought the name of the arch was just right. The arch looked small and thin as it sat on top of the big, wide landscape. It looked like it was about his height. He thought if he stood under it he would be able to reach over his head and touch the top of the arch with his hands. He wondered what the slick rock felt like.  

He liked the photo on the July page so much that when August rolled around, he discovered that he didn't want to turn the calendar page. If he needed to see a date in August, he would lift the page up and then let it down again so that he could keep looking at Delicate Arch. Even when September came he was still looking at the glowing arch.

Now it was October, and Brian finally decided he had to see the arch for himself. He drove two days to get to the town of Moab. Moab was the closest town to Arches National Park even though it was five miles away.

Brian decided to hike to Delicate Arch in the late afternoon. He wanted to see the same glow he had seen in the photograph. As he drove through Arches National Park, he saw many different types of rock formations. They had different names: The Three Gossips, Balancing Rock, and The Windows. They all had that same science-fiction red-brown color. He parked his car where the trail to Delicate Arch began. He took his camera and water bottle and started walking down the trail. He was surprised to see that the trail was made of concrete, not slick rock.

All of a sudden the concrete trail came to an end, but Delicate Arch was nowhere in sight. The slick rock went off in many directions. Without the trail, how would he know how to get to the arch?

Brian saw some other people walking on the slick rock. They seemed to know where they were going. He watched them walk past a little pile of rocks that were stacked neatly on top of each other. They looked almost like they made a pyramid.

He noticed there was another pile of rocks a little farther away, and another one even farther. He saw a park ranger and went over to her. "What are those?" he asked her.

"Those are cairns," she said. "We use them to mark the trail so that the landscape isn't changed too much."

Brian thanked her and followed the cairns. The slick rock, just like its name, was slippery. A couple of times Brian's feet almost slipped on the little pebbles that were everywhere. They were like tiny marbles.

After about a mile, he finally saw the arch. It was the same view he had seen in the photograph. The sun was beginning to set, and Delicate Arch was glowing brilliantly.

What surprised him the most was that the arch actually didn't seem so delicate after all. It was huge! When he walked over and stood underneath it, it seemed like it was a hundred feet high.

He lay on his back under the arch as the sun went down. As night fell, stars began to appear. The night sky was cloudless and moonless. Since the lights in Moab were so far away, the only light Brian saw came from the stars. That night, Brian could see more stars than he had ever seen before. The sky was lit as brightly as if the moon had been out.

Delicate Arch was no longer a glowing red-brown. Now it was black compared to the bright, starry sky. The photograph in his calendar had come to life and changed right in front of his eyes. As he made his way back to his car, he used the starlight to see the cairns. He knew that he would finally be ready to turn the page when he got home.

by Cheshire Dave Beckerman