Mazel in Moab

We floated down through Wyoming, still titillated by the possibility and shocked by the reality of impending change. We talked our way through the whole state, stopping only for a sale on jeans and a bakery. After all these weeks of traveling light, the feeling that there was another purpose to our trip began to register. We tried to sort out our goals. Living to work to support our lifestyle was out. In practical terms it would be cheaper to live outside the New York City area, although the thought of leaving family and friends made me cringe. Unless we moved to Beverly Hills, we reasoned, we could probably ease our mortgage and tax burdens considerably. We wanted to be outside more. Though we didn’t want to give up experiencing the change of seasons, I craved a sunnier winter. The place we would settle would have to be culturally alive and welcoming of newcomers, yet have an established sense of history. Instant ’villes had no appeal. It would be a place where we could work, though the details of what that work would be remained entirely fuzzy. Finally, since we were the ones making up this wish list, there would be plenty of good restaurants. The details and texture of what all that implied were unknown. The only thing we knew with clarity was that our lives were not going to be as they were. This was not just another two-week vacation wedged in between two slabs of work-as-we-knew-it. We didn’t want life to be the same, yet different meant change: new, unknown, scary. Free-floating anxiety would replace stomachaches brought on by familiar pressures. We continued to talk about it and agreed we were sick of the devil we knew. We were, almost positively, ready for a new devil. Sandy was more certain than I—perhaps because he had already made a major geographic move, leaving Michigan for New York—that moving was a big part of the right answer. In the meantime we reached a new state, and the land around us grew redder than hell. We were in Utah.

At Dinosaur National Monument, surely the place where Michael Crichton first imagined Jurassic Park, we hiked a red rock trail and saw a wall of prehistoric excavation in process. In silence we drove up and down the ten hairpin turns to reach the ten-thousand-foot summit of Flaming Gorge. Even the Sue was quiet in this surreal land. We surveyed the scene from our campground at the midpoint as the sun retreated behind us. The horizontal stripes of color—reds, beiges, and tans—swept around the horseshoe of water far below. Each layer was a history, an era, many lifetimes long. Naked mesas and parched buttes, once habitats of safety and refuge, were now islands in the sky, isolated and unreachable. With the colorful stripes of sand reminiscent of a fancy tank, I imagined the fish that once drifted in water that was now bone-dry desert air before me. One perfect skeleton, secreted in mud for centuries, then unearthed, could cause legions of people to swoon. Our individual lives made every difference and none at all.

As extraterrestrial as the mineral springs at Yellowstone had been, as surreal as the waterless fish tank of Flaming Gorge was, the slickrock of Moab brought us to another constellation. We reveled in the sunshine. Glowing red rock slopes surrounded us. In the distance was the outdoor museum of perpetual disintegration, Arches National Park. Get it while you can, see it while it lasts. Pictured on so many maps, guidebooks, and other literature of the area, one almost feels a familiarity upon seeing the vaulting rocks. We had to snap to and remind ourselves that these were natural configurations, not manufactured by Ray Kroc or Walt Disney. Welcome to Moab, cycling capital of the USA. In the 1950s uranium was briefly mined here, causing chaos and calamity in this tiny town. Wealth beyond imagining was imagined, and a few people did get rich. That out-of-character, crazy time in the red desert is referred to by some as Mormons on a Bender. Moab.

Moab. The word almost forces you to whisper. Moab. You have to be very deliberate to get that final b out. Moab. It is mysterious. We drove into Arches National Park. The scenery was bizarre. Red sandstone formations, from 150-foot sheer cliffs, to pillars with delicately balanced rock heads, to arches in wild variety. Where it is ground by the wind, the rock becomes a fine powdery sand, almost right for coloring cheeks. Low sage-green brush and yellow and purple flowers completed the makeup kit. The sky was blindingly blue. Moab.

It was strange, and yet entirely appropriate, to spend the Jewish New Year in the desert. I seemed to have a significantly higher tolerance for this climate than Sandy; genetic imprinting, he said. I liked the sensation of baking, drying out, and absorbing the warmth from the earth. Especially after a summer in Alaska, there was nothing like Rosh Hashanah in Moab. Official synagogue worship never appealed to me, but I did feel as if I was the only lonely Jew in Utah.

The trail we took that day was toward Delicate Arch, the cover girl of all arches. From the observation point along the road, she was barely visible, though I held her image in my mind. Slim and curvaceous, she is a graceful athlete, her hands and feet firmly planted, stretching her bellybutton toward the sun. At three miles round trip, the trek was classified as difficult, though at first I could not see why. The dirt path was easy to follow, pounded daily by many feet. Shortly, however, across a small canyon formed by a stream that in other seasons may have had hope of floating something but now was merely a ditch, we saw little antlike things winding their way up the rock face. They were people, and we would be in their steps soon. Sandy forgot his hat and was dripping sweat. His Scottish ancestry was showing. I wore long sleeves against the sun and had my many-pocketed vest loaded with the accoutrements of touristdom: camera, film, tissues, lip balm, and water bottle. I felt serene, though I wished I didn’t pant so much going uphill.

As we climbed the rock face, ordinary trail markers were abandoned. This was no place for signposts: there were no trees to which a ranger might nail a colored tag, and no one painted arrows on the rock. Someone had thought to indicate the way by placing little piles of stones every so often. It reminded me that when I was a child, we would leave stones on the graves of my grandparents. I never understood why. “So the family would know someone paid a call,” my parents said. But we were the only family they had left. I thought it was so that God could see someone still cared, even after the war and Hitler.

We followed the line of sight to the next little pile, climbing steeper, breathing harder. Around a curve the ground to our left fell away. The trail became a ledge. Thankfully it sloped inward, allowing gravity to keep us safely tucked in. We finally reached the apex of the hike. Before us was a huge bowl carved from the rock. As if there had once been an amphitheater in the sky, various stone “seats” seemed comically molded to look like squishy hamburger buns. On the far rim stood the arch, the opening possibly sixty feet high. People braver than we were scrambled across the rim to walk under the curve of the rock. They looked like dancers on Mars, the red planet, to me. The noonday sun backlit their frolicking outlines. We looked toward the east and saw the earth spread out below us; way below, off in the distance, you could imagine the curve of the planet. This was better than going to temple, holier than being in a building. The synagogue was supposed to be the house of God, but surely there was some mistake. If that were true, then what was this? I felt a twinge of sadness at being the only Jew in Utah on New Year’s Day.

Reluctantly, we began our return. We offered encouragement by way of smiling at the upward-bound walkers, who now loped slowly in the midday heat. Again I saw the little piles of rocks and wondered what I should be doing to sanctify this day, but the thought passed. It was good to sit down and drive on.

We picnicked briefly in a pullout by the side of the road and continued through the park. Clumps of gathered vehicles generally announced the best places for views, even before we could see the signage. We stopped several times to stare at the sights. After getting out to photograph yet another arch, we headed back toward the Sue. There was only one other car in the little lot, a rental. Its engine was running, and it was surrounded by four people, two couples it seemed. They were rummaging through the stingy desert earth, apparently looking for a tool with which to wedge open the door or window. It was a case of tourists outside, keys locked inside. Sandy and I went over to see if we could help. They nodded and pointed and yammered about which one was an idiot, who should shut up, and where they would find help in the desert. One fellow had managed to wedge his fingers into the driver’s window, which he held slightly open with his considerable weight. The tips of his fingers were beginning to look like gumdrops from the pressure. Judging by the position of their electric window and door buttons, it seemed clear they needed some kind of long rod with which to reach in and stab something open. But the desert isn’t a place where you can find fireplace pokers or ski poles lying around. Aha! It occurred to me we had a long aluminum rod with which we opened our awning. I ran to get it. Jamming it inside the window that the fellow was holding down—now with a bunched-up hankie to keep his fingers somewhat protected—I tried to “feel” my way toward the buttons.

“You see,” said one of the wives, “the women always have practical ideas!”

Bad time to rub it in, I thought. The other guy dashed to the opposite window and began shouting directions to me.

“Over,” he groaned.

“More under,” he grunted.

“This way!” he demanded.

Two things became clear: (1) English was not his native language, and (2) if this was ever going to work, Sandy—calm, handy, and English-speaking—had to step in and direct me instead of this quasi-hysterical guy. He went around to the passenger door and faced me through the car windows. We focused on each other as if I were the player, he was my coach, and the game depended on this play.

Hunched forward, both hands on both knees, Sandy began. “Straight down. To the left. Your right. Down a little. Press.”

Click, the door unlocked. Lots of smiles and thank-yous. One guy, now free to be casual and comedic, jokingly asked for our address, in case it happened again. As we walked back to the Sue, I called over my shoulder to him, “Where are you from?”

“Israel.”

Not the only Jew in Utah after all, I thought, and decided to give him two of my six or so Hebrew words.

“L’Shana Tovah,” I said, wishing him happy New Year.

Shocked, he looked at me and then said something to his crowd and pointed to his head, as if he suddenly had an explanation for why I’d been able to figure out a way to help them.

“Sechel,” I said, pointing at my head and using up another precious word, this one meaning common sense.

“Mazel,” he volleyed back, and smiled. “Luck. Ours for having met you.”

They left, and we climbed into the Sue. I felt a strange connection to this place, those people, and the day. We were all lucky on a day like this. I thought it must be a good omen.