The Grand Canyon

Day One

Eyeballs inadequate for the type of depth perception this place requires. No, Dad, it is not like I imagined - more vast, more mysterious, more unperceivable. Shades of red, brown, blue, gray. We flock as tourists to this cosmic entity, unsure of what it is, but sure enough to call it a "National Park." I struggle to see the bottom, to see which way slops up, which down. Vertigo. Side conversations about our lives, jumping photographs, drinking bleach water from my camelbak, the smell of sunscreen mixed with pine. The crows are the only bodies in the air above the canyon, giving a frame of reference for my eyes to focus on. 


We flock here, and so they developed. How is my experience affected by the volume of people, roads, cafes, gift shops? Subliminal messages litter the sublime. 


Day Three


"Scenery"
From the Rim Trail, 
the canyon is background
a painting, an exhibit to look at
static, 
but easy to get lost in during
an extended stare. 


South Kaibab 
pulls us into the canyon
into its heart and soul

depth changes
and changes
new information revealed
to my senses
more mysteries exposed and questions
to never answer. 


I allow the canyon to swallow me whole,
the belly is warm and sweetened with
Indian Paintbrush and Utah Agave. 



Day One


I gather with many others after sprinting, giddy, to Hopi Point, a known spot for watching the sun slip behind the Grand Canyon. Sitting on cold granite in company of tourists, ravens, wind, layers of metamorphic and sedimentary history; we all converge to watch the sun fall. We render ourselves vulnerable, malleable, affected by this passing of time, this mark of change ever the same. 
I am silent and pensive, awestruck. The raven dances over the canyon, the canyon deepens into navy-purple, the tourists press their shutter buttons over and over again, continuous until the sun's ultimate goodbye. All of our rhythms converge, locked into time and space, dictated by the sun-star. 


Right here right now is the ONLY sunset that has EVER existed. We sit together at the center of the universe. 


[It is hard, perhaps impossible, to speak of the Grand Canyon without cliches, and so I submit. I suppose this is because the Grand Canyon, sculpted by ancient and modern forces, also sculpts our collective consciousness as human beings - we experience much of the same. ]