With more than 4,000—yeah, 4,000—stories in the AJ archive, we thought it was a good time to pull one from the rafters, wipe off the dust, polish it with our elbow patches, and put it front and center for new readers to enjoy on our homepage. We could use a little humor this week, so laugh along with us. – Ed.
Friday morning, Melissa Fortnoy of Aurora, Colorado, slowly bent into Warrior Pose on top of Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park, and recorded the 100,000th yoga pose performed on top of the iconic sandstone formation. Her friend Jenna captured the moment with an iPhone.
“Oh, I didn’t know I was the…thousandth person? Is that what you said?” Fortnoy asked when congratulated. “Oh, hundred-thousandth. Wow. I don’t know, I just thought it would be a good Facebook profile photo.”
The arch, which sits on the edge of a thousand-foot-high cliff overlooking the desert in the Islands of the Sky District northwest of Moab, is a popular hike – a half-mile round-trip from the parking lot. Park staff would prefer hikers not walk on top of the arch, but that obviously hasn’t stopped more than 100,000 practicing yogis, and others who don’t mind the exposure to the east.
For most of the history of human habitation in the canyonlands areas, arches saw little yoga, but in 2010 a yoga teacher from Telluride created a website called arch-sanas.com, with an interactive list of rock bridges – there are more than 2,000 in Arches National Park alone – and a personal tick list for posers to check off their “summits.”
“There was a pretty steady stream after that website went up,” said Canyonlands spokesperson James McMann. “But after a smartphone app came out last year, the numbers of yoga tourists – we call them yogists – boomed.”
McMann, who was standing in front of Mesa Arch when Fortnoy took her Warrior Pose photo, said nearby Corona Arch seems to be quite popular for yoga photos as well, but it’s a three-mile round-trip hike, so it will take much longer for it to reach 100,000 yoga poses. Moab’s most famous arch, Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, doesn’t draw nearly the amount of yogists, according to McCann.
“I don’t do yoga, but I get it,” McMann said. “I mean, you come up here to this beautiful spot for a photo, and you can throw a peace sign, or jump in the air, or stand there doing nothing, or you can do…well, you can do whatever the hell that guy’s doing over there right now. What is that, the Tinkerbell?”
The Adventurey Report is almost certainly not true.
Photo: Wesley Tingey/Unsplash
Classy! What’s that yoga pose in the photo called? The fruit basket?
” performed on top of the iconic sandstone formation”
Can we PLEASE make a New Year’s resolution not to use “iconic” to describe everything.
Right, if iconic is used everywhere, there’ll be no room for “like” and “epic” and “whatevs”.
Nice little piece. I’m with Abaum on the yoga pose in the picture–fruit basket sounds appropriate. If, by chance, that is the “warrior pose,” I do not want to join that band-of-thieves. Very interesting that a smartphone app–which created “yogists”–spurred a tourist movement. Another example of technology in motion. Great stuff.
Looks to me like the “happy baby” pose. Definitely not the Warrior Pose.
I really really wish people would not climb these arches. Not only is it dangerous (someone died swinging on one I think a few years ago) but it could collapse the “iconic” arches and I would be very unhappy. Plus, who wants a photo of a beautiful view with someone’s sweaty body in the picture? I’ve had to wait sometimes for 20 minutes to just get a photo of an arch with no people. Guess I’m a purist – I wish people wouldn’t climb Fisher’s Tower either – it could also collapse. That will be the end of it all for everyone. Just because some people have to “do it all”. Bleah. I’m sure I’ll get yelled at. Go ahead, it’s just a comment section.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/satire
Etymology
…
Noun
satire (countable and uncountable, plural satires)
1. (uncountable) A literary device of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. Humor, irony, and exaggeration are often used to aid this.
2. (countable) A satirical work.
a stinging satire of American politics.
3. (uncountable, dated) Severity of remark.
Derived terms
* satiric, satirical
* satirically
* satirist
Unfortunately, it wasn’t clear simply because there are so many people in real life who would do this and it seemed to encourage that actual (I’ve seen it) behavior. I’ve read a lot of good satire, sorry, this ain’t it.
Side note, as a new subscriber I am overall impressed with the writing and photography, and looking forward to a year’s worth of it.
Thanks
Climbing on any arches in a national park is against the law. Maybe don’t glorify these sorts of violations? It’s not only dangerous, it can damage the arches and cause them to collapse much earlier. Already in Moab, we’ve lost a half dozen “iconic” arches and formations in the last couple years due to people climbing unsafely on them…
It’s a satirical post
Good.
Still. I don’t think it’s very obvious that it was intended as satire.
And people really do follow by examples, many of which are set by publications like this.
Sooooo…
Just out of curiosity which arches have been lost due to people climbing on them? I spent several years in Moab and never heard of anything falling aside from the Cobra
There are signs all over the park that prohibit climbing on the arches. The writing of this article condones and rewards this bad behavior. Maybe just take a picture in front of it like the rest of us and preserve the beauty of the park….. or you know, whatever, just do what you want cause after all this is America …….
I’m afraid it’s just satire, Alex.
As stated on my twitter post, decades ago I was the 583rd person to be photographed at Delicate Arch. Still have the photo. In a photo album. It was from when I lived in a van, old Ford Econoline I built out with bed, shelves, closet, sink, paneling, insulation etc. Built it in the parking lot of a home depot to save gas since I was going there almost every day. Got lotsa photos. A dude said I should post the photos on the gram. But that was not the purpose to begin with. The purpose was just to explore. I would rather look at the pictures & show people I know, than show a buncha people I do not know, because their comments are not relevant anyway. Archaic, yeah. But who gives a **** hoot.
The level to which the sarcasm went right over so many heads makes it almost funnier. Sad, but funny.
I love that we, the collective audience, totally missed that this piece of satire was aimed right at us; and how self-absorbed we all must be to have thought that it was not satire at all. The irony is incredible. Chapeau.