The Chronicles of the Canyon
This blog is a chronicle of my journey to and through Utah, Arizona, and Colorado in October 2021 - and how this trip parallels with one I took with my family when I was a child. It was an extraordinary trip to other places (mostly National Parks) to experiences from stages in my childhood to the present, to (always) going home that turned out to be my voyage to the earth. I made four journeys, but not all at the same time.
Journey I: To go on a trip; travel to another place
Journey II: A course or passage from one stage or experience to another
Journey III: The trip home
Journey IV: A set amount of travelling, seen as a single unit; a voyage to earth.
Journey I: The Beginning
Early October 2021. Autumn.
I am walking down the trail to Angel’s Landing at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It is an endpoint for observation. For the next hour, I will sit and watch the play of light. I wait for sunset…and my mind takes me back to the summer of camping in a tent and my first visit to the Grand Canyon.
I turn back to view Bright Angel’s Point and realize my mind has wandered from sunrise to sunset, from south to north, from wondering (why Daddy why?) to wonder.
I rarely stay in tents, though I would not rule them out. I like the rustic cabins at the North Rim and the glorious lodge finished in 1928. The Dark Sky illuminates the canyon.
Jeremy on our travels at Angel Point
At Angel Point, Jeremey has an idea.
The sun begins its journey to the other side.
Jeremey wrote the book on the Grand Canyon. Literally. Here is his book.
Jeremey takes my phone; he yells, “Go,” and takes this video (watch it on my instagram).
Maybe it was the spinning around. It could have been the guard rails. Call it serendipity. I don’t know, but my mind went back to 1965. I had been here before?
I didn’t remember, until now.
Journey II: Autumn’s Quaking Aspen is a prelude of things to come.
Early October 1963. Autumn. In the vicinity of Great Basin National Park. This is the beginning of Journey II. On the road to the Grand Canyon, a memory is ignited by the yellow Quaking Aspens. I shoot across time and space as a child on the road to the Grand Canyon.
My experiences have roots. They can sprout, like Aspen trees, and grow me home.
My experiences have roots. They can sprout, like Aspen trees, and grow me home.
July 1965 - I can hear my dad, “Wake up! Wake up! Come on. We don’t want to miss the sunrise.” My dad is making me get up to see the sunrise, I think. What’s the big deal? The sun rises every day.
“Come on,” my dad says. “I was up last night looking at the stars,” I plead. “What do you think the sun is? It is still dark. We’re are on our way to see the star.”
We wait and wait. Dad takes pictures.
The play of light. Right to left. The swift changes of color moving across the rock in front of me. I am mesmerized.
Sidebar: Aspen trees (or Quakies as I have always known them) are the first plants to reestablish an area after something like a fire.
This is because aspens reproduce clonally, meaning new saplings sprout from the underground root system of adult trees.
Even if the trees are damaged aboveground, the root system is likely to survive well enough to produce new saplings.
Each of the classical elements (earth wind, fire, and water, has an associated humour (the tendency of experiences to promote laughter). Each humour has an associated element. Using that model, earthgoes with autumn. This is my joy to the earth.
Journey III: Pipe Organs and Arches
October 2021
We are headed for the desert. Arches National Park is on our list. I have been rereading Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire written in 1967. Abbey transports me to my family camping trips in 1965 and 1967. His descriptions of the little campgrounds and the dusty roads through the park is like reading my mother’s journal.
“July 14, we didn’t put up the tent last night as the wind was very strong.”
Mom describes sleeping under a shelter that was there and mentions that there were less than 5 campers in the area.
Abbey’s meditation on solitude serves as my guide to making earth, water, and wind the central thing.
Pipe Organ Cactus National Monument is a long way from Arches. We had camped there many days ago.
Taken by my mother
We set up our camp.
July 1967. Left are the trash cans. Right is the edge of the picnic table.
We didn’t see anyone else until a Park Ranger or Forest Service guy drove up and came over to meet the only family camping in the area. My dad, a mining engineer, and the Park Ranger guy seemed to about the same age. They chatted a long time. Over a breakfast of corn beef hash, fried eggs, toast, and sliced tomatoes, my sisters and I joked about the park Ranger’s visit. Today, I wonder if the Park Ranger was Edward Abbey.
Back at Arches National Park, I see my old friends, the rocks. They are the heart of the earth. Below is my husband and I visiting in 2021, and then a picture from my family and I visiting in July 1967.
Journey IV: “I think I’ll go home now”
It was the sunset that brought me home. The earth. It was the closeness between the two pictures, separated by 56 years, that brought me home, the place where I grew up, and the family camping trip.
Gump ends his cross-x marathoning in Marathon Valley. He just stops in the middle of the road. And says something like I think I will go home now.
Two side-by-side pictures. Jane and Jerry (pretend to) join the Forrest Gump finish in Monument Valley. We went home after that.