Read Ebook: A Guide to Natural Bridges National Monument Utah by Anonymous

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Now here's an opportunity to adopt a truly different point of view: as different as it could be. We'd like you to be an Indian. Even if you already are an Indian, this walk will offer a different point of view because we want you to be an Anasazi Indian of about 800 years ago.

The trail is easy and has few hazards. Of course, you always have to exercise reasonable caution on trails or in any unfamiliar environment, but the main thing to beware of on this walk is the cliffs further out on the trail. There are abrupt, unfenced drop-offs and you and the kids have to be careful around them.

If you take the trail, try to put yourself in the place of a man of 800 years ago. We know you can't simply forget your own rich heritage, but try for a brief period to set it aside, try to look at the things about you from a different point of view.

Na'va produces tangy, tart fruits in good seasons. I like it; it's one of the few really tasty things in my diet. You can eat the rest of the cactus, too, after you scorch it, but I don't like it very much.

Mo'hu is a good plant. We eat the seed pods, which usually have tasty grubs in them. My woman braids or twists the leaf fibers and makes the nets, cords, and other things a man needs. Mo'vi, the bottom of the plant, helps make me clean when I wash with it and cleans me inside when I eat it.

Ersvi in hot water makes a drink I take when my belly hurts or to cure sickness. Many of us, mostly the children, die from bellyaches and fevers, but our medicine always makes me well--or it has so far, anyway.

Na'shu is a really good tree, for you can use it for many things. The timber is good building material, and the big seeds are good to eat when the cones ripen and open. Some years there are many of them, and then the women need not work so long for a supply.

Ho'taki is another very good tree, like Na'shu. We pull the long, shaggy, coarse ho'lpe from the trunk and branches to line our roofs. Shredded very fine, it's useful for lining our baby's clothes and my woman needs it sometimes. I use the wood for roof beams, too.

Owa'si, the rock flowers, are the food of my war gods. We do not eat them.

I drink water from little pools like these, sometimes when I have no other water. The water often tastes funny and has bugs in it. The deer, bighorn sheep, and other animals drink from these pools, too, when there is any water.

Almost always, I can find lizards in places like this. Even in winter, on warm days, they come out and lie on sunny rocks. Some years, when our food is gone in late winter and early spring, I eat them--but there isn't much meat on them.

There is our home! When I'm hunting up here, I like to look down at our village. It is a good place to live. The sun shines under the cliff in winter, warming the whole village, but the cliff shades our houses in summer.

The fields along the canyon floor have good crops most years, and our storage bins are usually full at the end of summer.

Well, I must leave you now, for I have much to do before dark. Good hunting!

You have come out here trying to see the world from the Anasazi point of view, we hope, but as you return you may wish to consider a 20th century point of view.

The 800-year-old buildings across the canyon and 500 feet below are called Horse Collar Ruin. It is a village of several homes, two kivas , and numerous storage bins. It may have been home for about 30 people. The brush covered flats along the stream were probably farmed, producing corn, beans, and other storable crops. Many other food sources were used; native plants and animals were eaten and provided numerous necessary "side products." Hides, bone, horn, feather, bark, wood, etc., were the raw materials for many tools, implements and supplies.

Anasazi villages were often located so as to be bathed in winter sunshine and shaded in summer. A somewhat more technological use of the sun's energy provides most of the electricity used in the Monument today.

Potholes, or rock pools, are a common feature of flat sandstone beds. Some reach great size and depth and not all the steps in their development are understood. Once a slight depression is formed by erosion, it holds water for a while after each rain. The moisture dissolves some cement and encourages more rapid erosion, thus deepening the depression. The depression thus holds water longer, and so grows faster. Wind may sweep away the loosened sand grains when the pothole is dry.

Lichens are a "symbiotic" plant association, as you may remember. An alga and fungus grow together, each providing to the other an element necessary to life. Neither can live alone; each is dependent upon the other.

Lichens are rather effective agents of erosion, which seems a bit surprising for a thin crust on the rocks, but it's true. Like most plants, lichens tend to make the immediate area more acid. The "cement" that holds sand grains together to make sandstone here is very susceptible to acid. The lichens create acid conditions, the acid dissolves the cement, and the sand grains are freed to blow or wash away. And that is what "erosion" is all about.

Juniper . Various species of juniper are common in the arid southwest. As you climb from desert grasslands to higher elevations, the junipers are usually the first trees you see. With pinyon pine, they often form a dense "pigmy forest" of short, burly trees. At slightly higher elevations, where it is a little cooler and moister, ponderosa pine and other trees replace the pinyon-juniper. The tiny scale-like needles on the twigs, and abundant bluish berries make junipers easy to identify.

SIDE TRIP: This side trail will take you up to a knoll where you will have a 360 degree view of the Monument. It is the only place on your tour where you can gain such a view.

Pinyon . Usually found growing with junipers in the pinyon-juniper woodland or pygmy forest. Under ideal conditions, pinyon may grow into quite respectable trees! The seeds are still used as a staple diet item by Southwestern Indians. As pinyon "nuts," they also find their way into gourmet and specialty food shops. The inconspicuous flowers appear in spring and the cones mature a year and a half later, in the fall.

Mormon tea . Used by Indians and pioneers as a stimulant and medicine, the beverage is still used as a spring tonic by many.

Ephedra is really kind of a neat plant. Like most desert plants, it has evolved methods of conserving water. For one thing, it has no leaves. Look at it closely--it's all stem. Plants can lose a lot of water from their leaves and many desert plants have leaves modified to reduce water loss, but Mormon tea has dispensed with leaves entirely . Plants usually need green leaves to produce food, but Ephedra has many green stems that carry out that function.

Yucca . The yuccas are very common throughout the Southwest, from low desert to mountains. There are many species, but they share one great peculiarity. They are symbiotic with a little white moth, the Pronuba.

Female Pronubas live in the blossoms. After mating, the moth collects a ball of yucca pollen and jams it onto the stigma of the flower. Yucca pollen is heavy and sticky; it doesn't float around in the wind. Other insects do not transport it. The Pronuba insures that the plant will produce seeds by fertilizing the blossom and then she lays eggs in the base of the flower where the seeds will grow. The larvae that hatch from her eggs eat many seeds, but a lot of the seeds mature, too. The moth will not lay her eggs anywhere else.

The Pronuba must have yuccas to reproduce. The yuccas must have Pronubas to reproduce. Neither can get along without the other.

Prickly pear cactus . Like all desert cactus, these are well adapted to the arid environment. Like Ephedra, cactus are all stem, have no leaves, and the stems contain green chlorophyll, the critically important element in food production. Cactus spines are modified leaves that serve as effective protection, but are not functional food producers. When moisture is abundant, cactus pads get plump and smooth. During extended dry spells, the pads shrink and wrinkle as the plant uses the stored water. How has the weather been around here recently? Look at the cactus and you can tell!

You won't get a very good view of Kachina Bridge here, but you will find it much easier to understand how bridges are formed if you walk out to the canyon rim. There is no trail, but it's an easy walk without unusual hazards other than the ever present cliffs. Remember, DON'T WALK ON THE CRYPTOGAMIC CRUST!

Desert varnish, the dark streaks on the canyon walls, is common in arid areas such as this. Each time the rock gets wet, some moisture is absorbed by the rock. Water actually seeps into tiny spaces between the grains of sand. Later, the moisture is drawn out of the rock and evaporated by hot, dry air. While inside the sandstone, however, the water dissolves minute amounts of minerals like iron and manganese. When the water comes to the rock surface and evaporates, the minerals come with it--but the minerals do not evaporate. They accumulate on the surface of the rock over thousands of years, slowly forming a very thin dark crust.

Notice the long, curving, fairly level valley right below you. This is an important part of the bridge formation story, for that valley was the stream channel before Kachina Bridge was formed. The stream now flows through the hole under the bridge, of course, but before there was a hole the water had to run around this side of the mass of rock that now forms the bridge. Every time White Canyon flooded , the stream cut a little deeper into the base of the rock and most of the cutting took place right where the stream was forced to turn toward you. As flood waters roared around this curving valley, the shape of the canyon also threw them against the downstream side of the obstructing wall of rock, so that the stream was eating into both sides of a fairly thin wall. It eventually ate right through the obstruction, and from then on the stream followed the shorter, straighter route. Continued erosion enlarged the opening and cut the channel deeper into the canyon. Downcutting of the new channel left this old channel high and dry. And there it sits!

Actually, the water coming down Armstrong Canyon also contributed to bridge development, but we'll get into that at a later stop.

Kachina is an excellent example of a young bridge. The thick, heavy span crosses a relatively small opening. The span and abutments are massive, not slim and graceful.

Below the bridge are ancient pictographs that some people felt represented or at least looked like the Hopi Indian gods called Kachinas. So the original name was discarded and "Kachina" was substituted.

As at the other bridges, there is a very nice little trail down into the canyon. The trail is in good condition, you can walk it without special equipment, and it isn't especially strenuous. It is a bit steep, so coming back on a hot day you may find the trip can be tedious. If the weather is fairly warm or hot today, you may also want to take water. An hour or hour and a half is adequate time to allow for the trip--unless you fool around a lot.

The Monument landscape is typified by hundreds of ledges and shelves separating the cliffs. Nearly all the canyon walls are lined with such ledges. That is because the rather hard Cedar Mesa sandstone is seamed with many thin layers of relatively soft rock. The softer material erodes very much faster, and as it wears away, the rock above and below it is also exposed to the elements. As a deep horizontal crevice develops, support for the rock above it is removed and chunks eventually fall out. In time, a wide ledge forms.

All of the above is happening here, right in front of you. This isn't just an interesting formation, it's a dynamic, continuing process that is changing the landscape.

The canyon coming around the corner on your left is Armstrong Canyon. It joins White Canyon on your right. In front of you is a waterfall above a deep, narrow plunge pool. This type of thing is often called a "nick point," and it is evidence of some abrupt change in the canyon's development. In this case, that change was probably formation of Kachina Bridge, which changed the gradient, or steepness, of the stream. The water, rushing over the lip and plunging into the pool, quarries out a hollow under the lip. In time the lip breaks off, the waterfall moves back a few feet, and the process goes on. A similar, but somewhat larger nick point is Niagara Falls.

If the canyon is dry today, it may be a little difficult to believe the explanation. If you could be here just after a heavy rain, when the flood thunders over the rocks at a rate of thousands of gallons each second, you would find the whole thing more believable.

This little arch may not win prizes for size, but it is very handy for helping explain bridge or arch growth. A bridge is first formed by the action of running water, but much of its subsequent growth is like development of an arch. Water seeps into tiny cracks, freezes in winter, and pries flakes or blocks of stone loose. Alternate heat and cold causes rock to expand and contract and that opens little cracks, causes tension, etc. If the rock has natural planes in it, it may break away along those lines.

If you look at the underside and sides of this little arch, you can see evidence of these processes. Please don't "help nature along" by prying pieces loose.

This arch may not have been here very many centuries, but it is a very "old" arch. Thin and delicate, the fragile span over a relatively huge opening is near the end of its life.

Back when we explained bridge formation and abandoned meanders, we said Armstrong Canyon's run-off played an important role in Kachina's development and that we would explain it "later."

Well, now is later. Before the opening was formed, while White Canyon run-off came around the channel on your right, Armstrong Canyon run-off flowed down the channel from your left and rushed right against the rock wall that once existed where the opening now is. Flood waters roaring down Armstrong would rush out its mouth, cross the White Canyon streambed, and smash into that rock wall. Floods carry great loads of sediment: sand, gravel, pebbles, rocks and boulders. These are the teeth of a flood, the sand and boulders. They are the agents of erosion that bang, smash and batter any obstruction. It is a bit like a liquid saw with stone teeth. It's an act of violence, a cataclysm, a ripping and tearing. There really isn't anything nice or gentle about it, but it's a great way to undercut rock walls and gnaw holes in them!

And that is precisely what it did.

Well, that's about enough for a while. You are more than halfway through the Monument and we've been telling you what to see, do, and think entirely long enough. Go now, and just enjoy the rest of this lovely walk. Walk the trail in leisure and peace. At the bridge are ancient ruins and irreplaceable prehistoric rock art. Let them speak to you, respect them, and consider your long gone predecessors here. Consider your place here, too, and the role you play in our beautiful little world.

BEWARE! And go cautiously, for there are spirits here that will make you part of this land and forever call you back!

Owachomo is a lovely bridge. Long, thin, flat; a fragile old bridge nearing its logical and inevitable end: collapse. The opening grows very slowly under an old bridge. The opening widens as the bridge abutments wear away and the overhead span becomes thinner and thinner, one grain of sand at a time.

The walk down to this bridge is the easiest of all. You can be down and back in a half hour . It is not strenuous, compared with the other two, and it offers some nice insights about bridges. In other words, here's another different point of view. Owachomo is sort of a different kind of natural bridge, for it was formed differently than the others. We'll explain that when you get down there.

We haven't said very much about wildlife here, mostly because you aren't likely to see much of it. Here however, you can see the work of a porcupine. Porcupines like to eat pinyon bark at times, and this pinyon must be pretty tasty. The large rodents gnaw at the tree to get at the nutritious inner bark, and may in time kill the tree by girdling it. The inner bark carries needed food and water between roots and leaves , and if all the lifelines between the top and bottom of the tree are severed, the top will die.

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