Yes, I am still telling stories of our summer vacation. This is a place for us to hold on to them so they won’t disappear from our memory.
When we were in the planning stages of our vacation, Jason didn’t even want to go back to Moab, and especially not Arches National Park. It was great when we went in 2010, but he was a little over it. I had this sense, though, that this was a place that my oldest son would really feel called towards, and I wanted to give him a chance to see it. In the end, I was right. Among the many places in our travels, the most inspiring to my oldest son was this visit to Arches.
He felt a connection to the rock formations, and wanted to be a part of it. We explored the Windows section near sunset, and he had a chance to connect with the Park intimately through its accessibility. He decided that someday he wanted to return to some of the National Park places to have a deeper encounter with rocks, canyons and mountains. Since then, we’ve been hitting the rock gyms and looking for weekend opportunities for him to go test these skills in the hill country with a group. This is important to us, as he is tiptoeing into his teenage years and we want him to have healthy connections with nature.
As we walked down towards the parking lot, we felt a collective gasp among the other park visitors, and turned to look at what they were seeing. The “Supermoon” was peeking through the North Window, surrounded by a cloud halo, and it was so beautiful we all stopped and stared for a while. None of our cameras could capture that incredible display of light and beauty, but we did get this one shot above of the moon over a different formation.
The memory of this view lingered for days after along our visits of other National Park areas. “Remember that legendary moon we saw?” my younger son would ask, and we would all murmur in agreement. These treasured moments in Arches; the inspiration for future goals in which to better explore the wilderness awoken in my older son, and the way the world lit up for a moment in a dazzling display of earth and sky, will forever be a beacon for us to draw us into exploring more of what this country’s National Park areas have to offer.
