Cloud formations in this place can be thundercrushers, so dark and massive that they muffle sound. Sometimes a stripe of lightning breaks free and cracks through the air like a neon gunshot. But the day we arrived was sunny and crisp, gorgeous fall weather. You could literally see for miles.
I had a secret fear about meeting the Canyon for the first time, and it was not the one I joked about in the weeks leading up to the trip. The joke was that anything that comes with “grand” in its name should be treated with skepticism, because life is full of disappointments, and therefore I would adjust my expectations accordingly.
My real fear was that on a spiritual level, the Canyon would feel like an open wound, like violence. All those innocent acres of land, ripped open beneath the slow but merciless Colorado River. The mighty chasm, down and down, yielding the highest heights from which to fall. So much power to harm. So much danger, waiting to consume anything that might decide to peer over the edge.
But if you flip the narrative and make the River a hero, the story of this place is a living metaphor for perseverance. The River flows instinctively, slow but determined, carving through thousands of miles of stark stone on its way home to the sea. It is a force of Nature beyond all reason, heroic and free, and nothing can stop it.
All of this was floating around in my mind as we approached the edge of the South Rim. The air was so clear you could breathe light into your lungs. Small clouds skittering around the horizon. The smell of iron and dirt and tourist perfumes, and somewhere the more ambient scent of juniper. I squinted behind my sunglasses, trying to focus correctly. I tried to see what I was seeing.
There it was, the masterpiece. Colors blue, gold, grey, cinnamon, and ochre. Dirty-dry, but with the River’s red back glinting down below. We boarded a bus whose route stopped at various vistas, but we stayed on all the way to the end, Hermit Point, the place that was supposed to hold the grandest view. Yet we found it small and uninteresting, not much different from where we’d started. Some large elk were slumped down in a grove of trees, and ravens swirled around them, and we watched them for a bit before hopping back on the return bus.
On the way back Hubs got a wild hair and decided that we should jump off at the halfway point. I should trust his wildness more often. The vista that we found there was the stuff of dreams, and I was in a dream-like state the entire time. I asked a tourist to take our picture, and she knew what she was doing, and if you’re on my holiday card list you’ll see what I mean.
But looking out over the edge of the Canyon, watching its shadows and lightflow streaming across the land, I could not find emotional purchase in any particular metaphor. In the end my brain simply failed to grasp the magnificence in front of me. It did not seem real, nor did it seem surreal. It seemed like something that was made to confound human consciousness.
All of this was a few weeks ago. My brain has come back into clarity, and what I now recognize about the Grand Canyon is the most obvious fact: it is in existential danger. The Colorado River is drying up, and it hasn’t been well managed for decades. Uranium mining inside the site could poison what water remains. And of course, wildfires continue their vicious onslaught. On our trip the North Rim was still partially closed, after fires devastated it in January. The entire fragile ecosystem is threatened by these things. Not to mention the effect it has on people in that region whose bloodlines go back generations. How do you solve a problem like that? There are conservation experts working on behalf of both the animals and the local Native Peoples, and you can donate to their work here.
In all my travels in the Southwest US, I have still not been there. Your gorgeous words have inspired me anew to go.