Leap of Faith

There is a place in Zion National Park. Angel’s Landing awaits you at the peak of a narrow band of rock thousands of feet tall. As exasperatingly beautiful as the view is, the hike … the hike is neither for the faint of heart, nor the squeamish of heights.

Climbing up the precarious zig-zag of Walter’s Wiggle brings you, eventually, to this lower shoulder. Proceed down this ridge into the shadow, follow the worn path to the left, then up, up, until you reach the sunlight again. Just for scale, you’ll find a couple of blue-shirted hikers there, one stepping into shadows, another full in the sun. (This is the view from near there.) You are already a couple thousand feet straight up here, and another thousand or more to go, right up that ridge, up and out of the photographic frame.

The name, Angel’s Landing, is so poetic and apt. Still I, at least the very small part of I which didn’t experience vertigo whenever I strayed too close to the edge of that ridge, would love to don one of those flying suits and personally re-christen its peak, Leap of Faith.

I guess I’ll just have to console myself with the recognition that, at least for me, hiking to it involved several emotional leaps of faith.