MOAB | Feeling Beloved
“And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”
Moab, in Southern Utah, is an enchanting town full of contrasts. Nestled in the Southwest desert, it is an area of stark but ethereal beauty. Red cliffs rise dramatically out of the flattest of plains, as if sculpted by some other-worldly hand.
As a land where dinosaurs once roamed, where the Wild West played out, markers of the past are everywhere. Serene hikes among stunning, primitive, red rock formations compete with modern, high-octane adventures, tempting the senses. Moab is a place to discover yourself in the present, but with a deep sense of being cradled by the past. A place to feel beloved on the earth
The town is the gateway to two national parks, The Arches and Canyonlands. The former has over 2,000 Arches, with the iconic Delicate Arch drawing endless streams of visitors. The park is a mystical wonderland of gigantic sandstone structures, eroded monoliths, spires and colossal rocks, balancing precariously; somehow daring you to approach, to wander among them, but forever imprinting a deep awe and respect for this ancient ecosystem upon you. For indeed, over 65 million years of intense geological forces created this surreal, fragile land.
A visit to the Canyonlands is equally as mesmerising. The Colorado River and Green River combine here, dramatically carving out the land. Majestic canyons, mesas and buttes formed over millions of years invite the visitor deeper into the desert. It is a place of reflection, a place where solitude can be found among its vast, primitive deserts. Traces of the past hang in its atmosphere. Rock art from hunter-gatherers from the Late Archaic period (2,000-1,000 BC) is found alongside petroglyphs from the Ancestral Puebloans, and some images are dated to after 1540 AD, when the Spanish re-introduced horses into America; a veritable gallery of mankind’s visions unfolding over time.
Moab is a land of awe and wonder, where dinosaur tracks are as ubiquitous as Native American petroglyphs. Time transcends. As the desert sun burns intensely overhead, you can somehow feel the ground shake as a gigantic Brontosaurus tears trees from the land.
As the night sky falls, a curtain of black dramatically descending, you are drawn into the thundering hooves of the Wild West days, debauchery and gunfights escalating in the town squares. Ultimately though, it is a magical place where time loses relevance, a place to feel beloved on earth.
To find out more: website www.discovermoab.com / Instagram discovermoab / Facebook @discovermoab / Twitter @Visit_Moab_Utah
