Wall Street

I visited Wall Street three times in one week.

Wall Street is the destination of a challenging hike in Zion Canyon National Park. To reach Wall Street you have to walk up a flowing river inside a deep canyon called the Narrows. The first pool is the entrance exam. You abandon your dry and warm existence and gingerly step into cold chest-deep water. The rest of the hike is a test of determination. At the entrance to the Narrows there were random groups of visitors; before long, bonded by common suffering, we were friends. The LDS (Mormon) women were my first acquaintances. I first saw them at the shop, where we all rented specialized water boots, neoprene socks, and a tall hiking stick. Now, they stood on the far side of the pool. Tall and slender, wearing ankle-length blue denim dresses, now dripping wet, and holding the long wooden walking sticks, they were the perfect model of the pioneer spirit. Yet there were only two of them.

Where are the other two? I asked

"They changed their mind before entering the water."

As they answered, their stern pioneer faces turned into a cheerful smile. I have to admit that I too, felt a guilty pleasure each time I saw another hiker turn around. It was tempting to give up. Walking knee-deep in a cold fast moving river was hard but was also fun. However since the sun cannot enter the tall and narrow canyon, the air temperature was uncomfortably cold, and added to the suffering of my frozen feet.

The young Japanese couple, without hiking sticks, wearing light tennis shoes, looked tired and miserable, but they would not turn around. Looking at them I was glad I splurged on the rentals. Adi, feeling compassion for fellow Asians, congratulated them on their bravery. They grunted in reply and waded onward. Each time we stopped for rest or a photo opportunity, we looked back hoping they are still there, and cheered them on as they grimly passed by.

The middle-aged couple from Cape Cod made a spontaneous decision to enter the narrows with us. They used branches as walking sticks and kept their original footwear. He was wearing heavy hiking boots and she had crocks. They overtook us as we had lunch in one of the few sunny spots in the canyon. We exchanged a few words and they kept walking upstream, he leading, she cheerfully chatting at his back.

Remembering the "Into Thin Air" disaster, I pre-set a firm turn-around time. This time was approaching just as the onset of shivering started to erode my enthusiasm. Just then, I saw the two LDS women heading back.

"We reached the tributary junction" they said proudly "It's around the next bend."

This landmark is the official start of Wall Street. With renewed energy we waved them goodbye and kept moving. As we reached the junction, we lingered a bit, and were disappointed to realize that the Japanese couple turned back just minutes before reaching their goal. The red smooth walls that form Wall Street are spectacular. However, as I reached a pool that seemed deeper than my chest I decided to turn back too. Fortunately, the Cape Cod husband found a shallower path through the pool and we all happily reached the finish line. They way back took half the time, and the hypothermia symptoms disappeared. It is much easier to walk with the flow rather than against it.

Bryce Canyon National Park, with its detailed weather-carved formations, is the female counterpart to Zion's grand masculinity. It has many observation points along the rim, which can act as a single-word Rosetta Stone. We heard the same word repeated for the five languages Adi and I know, and we could infer it for the other seventeen languages we heard. I spent one afternoon perfecting my pronunciation of the word in the Australian language: "Ah_mahy-zing". Bryce too has a canyon called Wall Street, and thanks to Doron's pre-trip coaxing, we descended from the rim into the midst of fantasy land. Surrounded by the weather eroded columns called hoodoos, our imagination took over, and we had fun discovering shapes in the abstract forms. The two hour hike was amazing.

I visited the third Wall Street through the internet. Unfortunately the New York version disappointed. During our week in the canyons, the S&P 500 lost 22 points.

Well, two out of three ain't bad.