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Show TWELVE The Hike to Rainbow Bridge Introduction Madelyn's June story of her hike to Rainbow Bridge in 1959 is at once an adventure narrative, a personal experience account, an appreciation of a great natural wonder, and a faith-promoting tale of people in a real outdoor set ting. It is a precursor of the many non-fictional short stories that have come out of Mormon Country in the past twenty years. Finely written, heartwarming, honest and straightforward, it is nei ther braggadocio nor self-deprecating. It tell us much about the country; it gives us an in-depth look at Madelyn and Harold in their "mature" years; it is marvelous personal history of a kind not often written by a woman. Rainbow Bridge, in the Navajo Indian Reservation in south Utah, near the border with Arizona, is "the largest, most symmetrical, and arguably the most beautiful natural bridge in the world."l Of salmon-pink Navajo sandstone, the bridge spans 270 feet, is 32 feet thick, and rises 290 feet above the eastern streambed of Bridge Creek. The size is such that the national Capitol in Washington, D. C. could be placed beneath it and still have some clearance above it. Lying on the northwest flank of 259 |
