It is part of our current mythos that we need to walk 10,000 steps a day to maintain optimal health. With my sit-down job as a school bus driver, it takes several days to achieve that goal. My previous job meant running up and down stairs often and briskly walking back and forth in a factory. Back then, I had no problems getting my steps in. Reflecting on these routines makes me consider how movement differs across lifestyles.
This thought prompts me to imagine myself not in a modern society, where work dictates my movement, but in a primitive, natural world. In that setting, my steps would be motivated by the hunt for food and water, or by the need to escape predators. Comparing these two lifestyles, I wonder: how many steps would I take each day?
It is currently winter. We have snow, and when I walk outside, I leave a trail of footprints. These prints will disappear when it snows again, or when the snow melts, or when someone else walks over my path. Footprints, generally speaking, are lost as soon as they are made.
Unless they are not.
In exceedingly rare moments, a footprint can last, not for moments, but for millions of years!
We were on our Alaskan Trip. I had us visit as many places, with as much variety as possible. One of those places was a dinosaur trail. The story went that some boys at a favoured swimming hole discovered several dinosaur tracks in the rock. The river that they were playing in had eroded the shore enough to expose this ancient trail. Obviously excited, they had shared this discovery with a local university and, as a reward, the kids helped with the research alongside the paleontologists.
I mapped the discovery site, worked on the itinerary to get us there, and, on the day we arrived, hiked to what would have been our first sighting of dinosaur footprints.
But it did not go as planned.
Though we arrived and hiked as planned, we failed to find the prints. As I learned only upon arriving, the very erosion that had revealed the tracks had also erased them.
The experience was disappointing, but it emphasized how fleeting and precious some traces—like our footsteps—can be.
Undeterred, I made another attempt the following summer during our America the Beautiful trip. This time, I confirmed that the dinosaur tracks existed, and we would truly see something. The Mill Canyon Dinosaur Track Site vindicated our effort.
The site is small. I can imagine how this could have been overlooked. It was only a chance discovery that allowed visitors to see these tracks. There is not much in the area to attract people. It is hot, desolate, and pretty much wasteland. Stumbling upon these dinosaur trails must have been an accident.
At this site, only discovered in 2009, there are about 200 tracks from about 10 different species. Many of the tracks have an obvious dinosaur-like appearance. Others required a little more interpretation. Fortunately, there is an online brochure that helps visualize the rock marks and the site signage.
Regrettably, we did not do the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Bone Trail, but our experience seeing preserved footprints left us reflecting on how rare it is for ordinary steps to be remembered—by history or by us. I intended to, but there was a sign saying only 4X4s should proceed due to loose sand. I was carrying heavy camp equipment and didn’t have enough clearance in my RAV4, so I decided to skip this location and head to our main destination that day, Arches National Park.
- Check out All The Places We Have Been to see where the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Track Site is located and all the other places we have seen.
- The site is free to visit and very close to the main highway. It is only a few minutes to walk from the parking lot.
