Grand Canyon

Last weekend we hiked the Grand Canyon, down the Grandview Trail. I had been in the Canyon once before, with Sam on the much more popular Bright Angel Trail. The Grandview is much less traveled, in rougher condition, somewhat less protected and generally more rugged. Naturally, I liked it much better.

It was originally a copper mining trail, around the turn of the 19th century, and later became one of the early tourist attractions in the Grand Canyon. There is still much evidence of mining down on Horseshoe Mesa, including rusted-out tin cans, evidence of an earlier time when rough men in the wild relied on canned food for survival—mostly beans and fruit, I think. I did the same in my early days of camping, lugging cans into the woods and opening them with big knives, which was immensely satisfying and made me feel like the grizzled men of a more primitive era.

Millions of people visit the Grand Canyon every year, coming from all around the world to stand at some of the many lookouts and gaze down in awe at its grandeur, the extraordinary vastness of it all. It is almost unimaginable to fathom that the ravages of time and the Colorado River could carve a sculpture of such scale. I watched some visitors last week. They look down first in stunned silence, trying to take it all in. Then they reflexively reach for their cameras, despite knowing intuitively that no photograph could possible do justice to the spectacle in front of them.

It is a wonderful thing to hike down into the depths of the Canyon, which only the rarest of visitors take the time to experience. Curiously, it makes the Canyon seem smaller to me, and more intimate. I begin to get a feel for its history, for the ecosystem, the springs and creeks of fresh, clean water that feed ribbons of green vegetation and empty into the surging Colorado. I listen to the territorial caw of the Canyon ravens, and wonder if they have ever been out above the rim. I marvel at the stunning beauty of the cactus flowers, which bloom with increasing frequency as we descend to warmer elevations below. I observe the wildflowers, just starting to reemerge, and how many more appeared on the way back up the trail, after a few warm days in May.

There are countless glories in this world of ours, the Grand Canyon being one of the greatest. I am grateful that it took me in for a few days, and shared with me a few of its secret splendors.