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By
Golden Webb
(Published June, 2002, Utah Outdoors magazine)
It was a perfect fusion of flesh, stone, sky and cheap plastic: my 6-foot, 198-pound body, precision engineered by God for athletic virtuosity; the southwesterly breeze blowing 50 feet off the desert floor; the green Frisbee; and the two Devils Garden hoodoos, 50 feet off the ground and 50 feet apart—weird geologic dinosaurs with broad rounded backs that left just enough room for error. And, like Michael Jordan, floating up over Bryon Russell with 5.2 seconds left and all of creation balanced on a knife’s edge, I knew it was a good lob almost before the Frisbee left my fingers.
The Frisbee arced over the gap and dropped right into Todd Hollingshead’s hands. Todd’s mom, Sally, who was watching from the Mastodon near the picnic tables, yelled “Beautiful!” Dave and Florence Farnsworth smiled appreciatively from their perch on the Big Fat Lady’s Boob. No one else took much notice—too busy. Mom was relaxing in the shade somewhere. Bud was looking for the other Frisbee—the purple one—over by Metate Arch. Lucy and Paul were smooching in a dusty alcove thick with rat scat and hantavirus. Various and sundry Farnsworth, Webb, and Hollingshead kids were in various and sundry states of danger and delirium: stumbling sun-drunk along the edges of killer drops; chasing lizards; climbing over fins and hoodoos; throwing Peeps against the rock to see if they’d stick, etc. Dad was trying to herd cats and keep everyone alive, but that floppy Gilligan hat he was wearing was making it impossible for anyone to take him seriously.
We
were just one misplaced foothold, one rogue Frisbee throw away from broken bones,
cracked skulls and blood sprayed across the sandstone—in other words, having
a great time. Whether or not you’ll have fun at Devils Garden, located about
13 miles down Hole-in-the-Rock Road southeast of Escalante, depends on your
ability to get out of the car and let your “inner monkey” take over.
Devils Garden is a perfect family getaway: more intimate than epic, at least by the lofty standards of the desert southwest, but with plenty of space—both flat and vertical—to let everyone break a sweat and scuff up their knees a little bit. It has a whimsy, a funkiness, indeed a charm that’s less the Old Testament of other southern Utah landscapes and more “Gulliver’s Travels.” Lilliputian. Monument Valley for midgets. The kind of place you’d pass through driving down the Yellow Brick Road toward Oz… a place straight out of a bedtime story.
Don’t get me wrong. Devils Garden isn’t just for kids. If this were Japan (as the old refrain goes), Devils Garden would probably be a national monument, or at least a sacred Shinto shrine. But we’re talking Utah here, where even our proposed nuclear waste dumps are pretty. As it is, this isn’t even our best or most famous Devils Garden: that would be the Devils Garden in Arches National Park near Moab. What’s fun about this Devils Garden is its undeveloped, casual nature. Imagine Goblin Valley before the road was paved, and on a smaller scale. There’s a sign, a little dirt road off a bigger dirt road, a couple of picnic tables, and that’s it. Oh, and a few miles of weirdly shaped fins and hoodoos and domes—a gallimaufry of rock, a devil’s garden of stone.
From the parking area near the picnic tables, check the wind with a moist fingertip, then la-di-da in a southerly direction, letting scenery and topography guide your steps. Don’t hike in a straight line. Bring a Frisbee or a football, and watch it sail over people’s heads into nooks and crannies you’d never have otherwise thought existed. Turn around when you’re sick of climbing through natural arches and scrambling over slickrock mushrooms, dinosaurs, goblins and nipples. Or just sit in the shade and watch the clouds go by. Or go nose-to-snout with one of those big fat tame chipmunks.
If you’re looking for epic hiking in epic wilderness, there’s plenty of that close by: just keep driving south. Hole-in-the-Rock Road provides access to the Lower Escalante Drainage, one of the world’s premier canyon systems. Harris Wash, Red Breaks, Twentyfive Mile Wash, Scorpion Gulch, Spooky and Peek-a-Boo Gulches, Coyote Gulch, and Davis Gulch are all within a half-hour’s drive of Devils Garden. To the west, the Kaiporowitz Plateau offers an even wilder destination, with miles and miles of empty piñon-juniper woodland bisected by the occasional crow-haunted canyon.
The unique structures of Devils Garden owe their existence to a difference in the erosional rate of the different rock strata. A harder cup layer, like a helmet, sits on top of the softer layer of rock underneath, creating the knobby mushroom shape of many of the pinnacles. The structures of Devils Garden are fragile and rare—watch where you put your feet. Because lug soles leave marks, and because no one really knows when they might collapse, it’s not kosher to stand on stone arches and bridges, though there’s no fence holding you back. Just remember this simple maxim: you fall you die.
There’s plenty here to point your lens toward. Colors are best at sunrise, when the light is warm and the Straight Cliffs of the Kaiporowitz Plateau glow bright in the background. Metate Arch, subject of many a Tom Till photograph, is located just south of the picnic tables. There are numerous other arches and windows and bridges scattered willy-nilly, a thousand different formations in a thousand different fairytale shapes, different shades of rock, millions of years of geologic history on display, and something new and unique around every bend—bring a lot of film.
A few miles east of Escalante, turn south on to Hole-in-the-Rock (there’s a sign), and drive 12.7 miles on the graded dirt road. At the signed Devils Garden turnoff, turn right and drive .3 miles to the parking area. Bring your own water (more than you think you’ll need, just to be safe). In the summer, Devils Garden is an oven—way too hot for the middle of the day. Best to visit in the morning and evening hours.