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What's a Pack Rat? It is in fact, not a rat, but a Vole. What's a midden? A fancy name for a pile of trash. What's a pack rat midden? A trash pile adjacent to the rat's home. What's so special about a pile of trash? Aha! Glad you asked.

Pack rats build mounds of debris, piling them up at the base of trees, cacti, or rock crevices. These dens contain an average of 20 cubic feet of material and act as both protective fort and insulation over the rat's nest.

Pack rat nests may be continuously occupied for hundreds, even thousands, of years. The middens are created layer on layer by generations of pack rats carrying seeds, twigs, and other matter back to their dens. Cemented together by urine, both nest and midden can be preserved for a very long time by the arid environment of the Monument and the desert Southwest. They provide plant ecologists with clues to climatic conditions and vegetation patterns dating back as much as 25,000 years. For example, pine seeds found in an ancient pack rat nest in what is now desert are evidence that a cooler and wetter climate existed at that time.

The Escalante, its side canyons, and the upper Paria are particularly noted for their concentrations of pack rat middens. "I have loved the red rocks, the twisted trees, the red sand blowing in the wind, the slow, sunny clouds crossing the sky, the shafts of moonlight on my bed at night. I have seemed to be at one with the world."

Everett Ruess