I wasn’t alone but the place held such a tangible kind of lonesome that it felt like maybe I was.
In the guts of the Grand Canyon as I headed toward the Colorado River, it was actually only 7:15 at night but the night was so pitch black dark it might as well have been 2 a.m. The short sandy trail required a head lamp much of the way to avoid tripping over rocks and small shrubs. But at some point the pathway seemed to brighten almost miraculously, without man’s intervention and with a clean and crisp white glow so soft and striking that the guiding light on my beanie cowered to the off switch in deference.
Not an alien nor a jet plane; neither was it a new fangled drone that bathed me and my footsteps in an etherial light wash. No, it was just the moon. It had shifted from behind the night clouds to reveal its nearly full self and with it a cascade of brilliant glowing moonshine poured down in volume enough to guide even the most blind-sighted person’s way.
Once I reached the river’s beach the sky was velvet. It was somehow both colorless and the most dense black and blue I’d ever seen. I just kept blinking. My eyes had to adjust over and over again to how blank the sky was and yet how full. Venus shone like a champ and a Dipper and hundreds of other little sparkling dots of matter we romantically call stars competed for attention. The more I blinked the more I saw and still I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a sky that clear and that pristine before or ever will again. No picture or description could ever do it justice, and yet it was the most exquisite image and the most unforgettable tale.
My mind drifted as I watched the magical moon stretch and rise and fall. I found myself wondering whether it was moving or I was. People nearby talked, told stories and guessed at constellations, but I only partly heard. Standing there among the caverns many millions of years old, this moon was transfixing. Its hold on me nearly narcotic. For what felt like hours I watched it and it watched back like it had discovered the only human in the whole wide world in me. And perhaps it had, because in the tiniest, quietest moment right then, I swear I saw God.