Granddaddy’s Arch

I went looking in the places people usually passed by. That was the game by then. I had learned where known arches tended to occur, and once you understand enough of the geology and terrain, you start wondering what might exist farther along the same cliff line. That's how I found the arch I eventually named Granddaddy's Arch.

It sits in Clifty Wilderness in Corbin Sandstone. I documented it, photographed it, recorded the location and measured it. The opening is roughly twenty feet across and about five feet high. Nearby are tafoni formations and another smaller window or tube in the rock. But its significance to me wasn't its dimensions. It was the name.

Granddaddy's Arch connected two pieces of family history. My grandfather. And Daniel Boone. I wanted the feature to carry that connection.

Naming something informally in the backcountry is easy. Getting that knowledge beyond yourself is different. Eventually the arch entered the broader arch-documentation world, including Bill Patrick's collection, using material I had produced. That was satisfying in a way that simply checking another waypoint never could be. For years I had used other people's records to explore.

Someone had gone before me, measured something, described it, mapped it or photographed it. That information allowed me to find the place. Now the exchange was beginning to work in the other direction. Someone else could encounter Granddaddy's Arch because I had gone looking first. That was when the game started becoming something more permanent.