I Came to Natural Bridges for the Bridges. I Keep Going Back for Everything Else.
Utah’s first national monument hides a thousand years of Ancestral Puebloan history, petroglyphs and a hidden register down in the washes, and the darkest sky I have ever stood under.
The first time Jim and I drove out to Natural Bridges, more than a decade ago now, we nearly had the whole place to ourselves. We’d come for the three great stone bridges the monument is named for. We spent the afternoon down in the canyons with a committee of turkey vultures, and we rolled into the little campground at dusk figuring we’d already had the best of the day.
Then a guy named Errol wandered over from the next site.
He’d driven out alone to see the bridges too. The three of us got to talking, and we kept talking over some brews long after the fire burned down, trading stories about the places that had gotten hold of each of us and never let go. At some point I leaned my head back to stretch my neck and stopped mid-sentence. The whole sky had filled in. The actual structure of the galaxy stood up over the canyon like a second landscape, the Milky Way so bright and so detailed it looked like weather, thousands of stars holding steady all at once. I’d seen dark skies before. I photograph them for a living. I had never seen anything like this.
We stayed in touch. He went on to run for public office out in California years later. I still think about that night, and the reason has stuck with me. The bridges are what got all three of us in the car. They’re barely half of why we keep coming back.
Years later, Visit Utah asked us to make a film about Natural Bridges, so we packed up and spent nearly two weeks out here, chasing first light on the bridges and hiking into the canyons after dark for the stars. Here’s what we came back with.
The film gets you here. Everything past this point is how to make the trip count. When to come and which nights to save for the sky, which bridge to stand under when the Milky Way lands, the ruins and the hidden register you have to go find on foot, and the trip planning we only sorted out by coming back year after year. If you’re already half in the car, keep going.
