I have recently learned that I am kind of a big deal in the Grand Canyon; that is, now that I join the less than 1% of all Canyon visitors who have hiked to the bottom and back. This month I completed the anecdotally rare journey with 2 awesome Wildland Trekking guides from the South West and 6 lovely dudes from the Mid West. With me rep’ing the East Coast, we nine were a sort of American snapshot: a motley, wonderful crew.
Predictably the trek provided an athletic challenge and a near out-of-body nature-bonding experience. Somewhat surprising was the intense personal reflection it compelled in me. But even more unexpected were the short, but sincere, inter-personal engagements it sparked, both with my eight hike buddies and the myriad strangers we met along the way.
I don’t know whether it was the people affecting the place or the raw stuff of the place itself, but at times it seemed the Canyon emitted a near human spirit. Sometimes I swear it walked along with us, not just under foot or above, so it rounded out our group as the unofficial number ten.
Unlike some of my other travel articles, what follows is much less a roster of sights than an inventory of the thoughts and feelings sparked by the Canyon, the people and the experience. While I hope it will prove inspiring or at least thought provoking, there’s no doubt it will prove considerably less useful in planning a vacation. My bad.
List-Less. I’ve never understood the bucket list concept. With that we are literally telling ourselves that since we will never do and see all the places and things we’d like to, we must narrow down to only the top X items. Of course, practically speaking, I’ll never see and do every thing in every corner of the world. But why rub it in with a piece of paper, a Google doc, iPhone list or mental tracker of the only 15 experiences I can ever strive to have in my life?
Even if it will never be true, I want to feel like I will be able to experience every single person, place, event and feeling in the world before I die. (If this borderline naïve perspective makes you want to heavy sigh and roll your eyes at its silly innocence, honestly, I won’t be mad at ya.)
Ironically, the Grand Canyon is on millions of people’s bucket lists, and now I understand why. I have never felt more enveloped by nature than being snuggled by the vast and varied rocks, hills, crevices and rivers of the mighty landmark. I have also never felt so significant and insignificant at the very same time.
Something as enormous, ancient and globally distinct as the Canyon has a way of putting our human experience in astounding perspective. To anyone who leaves this place off your bucket list, re-think it. You will be changed.
Do, Because You Can. I knew hiking the Canyon would be a challenge, but it turned out I fared even better than I thought I would. Exhausting, yes, but feasible, for sure. Running stairs and amping up my cardio beforehand helped, but as with plenty of other things, most of the battle is in the believing that we can. If I hadn’t already been seeking adventure and experience I wouldn’t have found myself on the trip in the first place, true.
But, the hike reminded me to punch up the expectations for myself with each new journey. As humans, as Americans, we are blessed with the the opportunity to do damn near anything, or at least to try. So, keep trying and keep doing. For my part, I’m already deep in thought about my next limit-pushing experience. Any ideas?
I.O.U…I Think? Man has been stumbling across this monstrous Canyon for thousands of years, sometimes making it their home. From the first native peoples to the series of conquerors that would claim it in succession, humans and the Canyon have undoubtedly had a complex relationship, with we men likely never knowing all the secrets of the spot, even to this day.
It’s these kinds of Jack Handy deep thoughts that peppered my mind like an annoying sink drip during the initial 7+ mile hike down the South Kaibab Trail, the almost 10 mile hike back up the Bright Angel Trail and the 5-8 miles wandered in between around the great and feisty Colorado River.
Just being there, I immediately felt a sense of accountability, but for what I had no idea. Was I worried about some far off future commercialization? About environmental deterioration? About idiot visitors who carve Joey Loves Jenny into 10-figure aged rocks?
To touch a cliffside that’s anywhere from 6 million to 70 million years old, walk a trail hoofed since the 1940s and sleep in a place built in the 1920s is to become a part of history, not just to learn about it. Surely there was something I was supposed to do now that I had participated.
In a time when our cultural fabric is being challenged at all ends, getting the chance to participate in that history seems no longer priceless, but with a cost attached. Am I just an observer, a tourist, a consumer of the beauty and the majesty or is there something I should now be doing to help ensure its endurance beyond me?
One thing that felt certain is that over the course of all history, we humans have often played dual roles in places like the Canyon: we’ve been the lovers and the fighters, the believers and the betrayers, the caretakers and the destroyers. So which am I going to be?
American Beauty. The past year I’ve been determined to see more of our United States. It’s amazing to go abroad and experience foreign places, languages and cultures. But there are incredible things to be seen and done between our shores. Until I lay my eyes on it, I cannot imagine there is anything more gorgeous than the intricate, diverse, complex beauty of the Grand Canyon.
Scale. Size matters. As far forward, downward and side-to-side that my little eye could spy it was there. It never disappeared from sight or faded away, it simply persisted no matter where I looked. Its depth wasn’t only in feet below, but also in the hollows and crevices beside.
Its magnitude wasn’t found only in desolate rocky hills but in the unexpected vegetation of every elevation, thick with purpose and unique in form. Part of its wonder was how random its placement must seem to aerial and terrestrial eyes. Imagine walking along a desert in real Road Runner fashion and dropping right into a hole more massive than any imagination could muster. Meep meep.
Color. Those in the know say Spring will bring more and vibrant color, but even in Winter the landscape is full of hues. More pronounced and varied than I would have figured, there was every sort of rusty red, dusty brown and orange on the color wheel. Plenty of greens, patches of blue and periodic yellows sprinkle in like latecomers to the party.
Rounding a corner or stopping for a hydration break sometimes revealed wild flowers of other pigments, popping added visual candy to the already sweet scenery. There are plenty of visually incredible sights in the world – just check out my writings on Costa Rica, Niagara Falls or Yosemite for a few examples. But I never felt like I was walking on the inside of a painting before now. Even the same moon we all always see held a unique sheen there in the Canyon.
Texture. So monolithic did the Canyon seem that it was easy to ignore the zillions of microscopic fabrics that made it up. But it’s equally easy to rediscover them by simply dragging a hand along the side of any rock that hugs the trail. Its rippled skin looked like leather but felt like concrete.
Mid-way up the Bright Angel reveals a quiet interior cavern of dark, razor-edged cliff hills. They looked almost black, tinged with a yellow-ish white and balanced sharp lines and rounded folds, resembling the flaky layers of a Grands biscuit before the butter goes on. From the infinite dusts that made up the trail, to the delicate, dying arms of the Agave plant and the rushing, dewy waves of the Colorado, texture was alive in the Canyon every second.
People. I have always been fascinated by the idea of family and in some ways, it’s people, not the place that make the place. For some traditionalists, the word applies only to those we’re born or married to. I’ve always assumed that family could mean something more and come in all kinds of forms.
Maybe it sounds far-fetched, but while our group started out as strangers, after three days together it felt like we had created a family of a sort, like a Keurig single serve style clan built to make the Canyon just that more personal and important to us. .
We aren’t destined to stay knit together, but for that short time we helped each other brave the Canyon, escape from reality and learn about lives and views other than our own.
We talked business, brainstormed hash tags and screen plays, figured out our six degrees of separation across continents, learned about geology, Canyon history and accidentally debated politics. We talked of cul-de-sacs, children and spouses, friends, neighbors, family legacies, estranged fathers and some bar named O’Malley’s. And all with an incredible sincerity unique among familiar people, let alone strangers.
We walked off the sorest of muscles, went without cell phones and wore more shirts at one time than any people ever should. We endured a Greek pied piper, pot smoking, over-packed Millennials and a woman who loved both ghosts and bacon at 6 a.m., managing not to punch or curse out any of them.
We eked out friendly greetings to the same handful of people no matter how many times we saw them up and down the trails or in camp. In each other we may even have met a complementary soul for another time, another life. Thanks to the Canyon we did all these things and thanks to you all, my heart is more full than when I left Vegas.
I’m With the Band. Let’s end where I began. I and my friends are now among a tiny percent of people who have seen this miraculous hole in the ground from beyond its rim. Despite all the lofty, academic, well-meaning and optimistic thoughts written here, I give you a bit of cold, hard, American hubris.
After I left our Canyon crew to head back to the airport, I stopped at the rim to take her in one last time. It was cold and snowing and I found myself so grateful that this weather had waited until our hike was finished to commence.
As I looked out over Mather Point, I also found myself feeling super Charlie Sheen winning compared to everyone around me. While they took selfies in jeans and sneakers and would proclaim they’d been here, I had a hard time taking them seriously. Surely, they had no clue what the Canyon was about by staying comfortably up top, just as I hadn’t had a clue before this trip and have only the smallest of clues now.
It’s ironic that after all the thoughts of preservation, inclusion, beauty, relationships and exploration my last substantive thought was of competition. I had done something most of them hadn’t and to this very moment it’s a point of incredible pride. Oh well, no one’s perfect. Just ask O’Brian.