The Grand Canyon’s Doppelganger : Day Seven

Lone Tree - South Rim

There are two Grand Canyons.  There is the view of the canyon itself, which is incomparable.  We must just say that is it a planetary phenomenon, one of the earth’s greatest hits.  Like so many views and vistas in the west, it contains the seeds of both belief and disbelief.  It is hard to ignore, standing on the rim trail and looking down some 2000 feet or more that this rugged landscape is all too real.  But hovering in, around, and through this

South Rim with a sprinkle of people

view, there is the idea of the canyon. Unlike the reality of a table and the idea of a table, which are nearly identical, the idea of the canyon provides no cognitive prop to guide us in what we are seeing.  Viewing the Grand Canyon, hiking its rim trail, tramping through its pine forests, reminds us that some things are eternal, even if we nothing lasts forever.  Even when we know the canyon was formed in time, and will end in time.

The other Grand Canyon is ugly in form and shape.  The idea of this other canyon, and the canyon itself, is all too easy to conjure.  I was waiting for this “other” event since arriving.  The Grand Canyon

not my photo

appeared as a good candidate.  We arrived the night before our main day in the park, and were lulled into complacency.  It was near dinner time, and at the far eastern end of the south rim, at Desert View Watchtower, there were few people.  The initial exposure to the Canyon both lulled and exhilarated us; we did not realize, as evening approached, that the next day we would meet the two Grand Canyons.  One would enliven our  souls.  The other, would rip them out of our flesh and trampled them to near death.

I should start with the Grand Canyon, and not its dark side.  As far to the west as possible in Grand Canyon National Park is Hermit’s Rest, a building designed by Mary Colter and built in 1916. The structure clings to the rock wall, and its stone work as the same hue and glint as the surroundings. Its integration is purposeful and complete, it even gives the impression of imminent collapse.  Unlike the sprawling

Hermit's Rest

visitor’s center and host of lodges at Grand Canyon Village, this stone structure belongs in nature.  Hermit’s Rest would “work” as a ruin or a fully functional visitor's stop.  My daughter buys a book written by a park ranger called “Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon.”  The subtitle refines this point: “Gripping accounts of all known fatal mishaps in the most famous of the World's Seven Natural Wonders.”  The cover art features images of natural beauty and human horror.  The canyon itself, golden, glowing, a rainbow arching into or out of its depths; two planes colliding in the air, just at the moment of impact; and in the foreground, a skull wrapped in sepulchral shrouds. 

From Hermit’s Rest, the rim trail moves east, quite literally along the rim of the canyon.  It is hiker friendly, but at certain points, one must be particularly aware of footing. The rim trail’s setting is

closely correlated to its name, and is often just a foot or two (or less) from cataclysmic drops. This sets up an odd dichotomy:  to our left, this great expanse of space.  By most measures, the most voluminous we have encountered.  For this space moves out, and up, and down; at the same time, we are obsessively aware of the minuscule space where our feet fall, or may not fall, to that dismal place of skulls and shrouds.

But we are safe, and with each twist and turn of the trail, our perception is forced to struggle for anchorage.  There is no perch for us.  We are required to walk the earth with the most intense focus. We can take nothing for granted.  This produces a hyper-awareness of the self, which at the same time leads to the loss of the self.  We daily walk through a world of the familiar and

routine.  But on the lip of the Grand Canyon, this cannot be done. We are awoken to new possibilities.  The threat of our immediate death is only one.  The other is the awareness of the connections between all things. Without our standard reality props, we see how we are connected to the ground, the air, the distant vista, the sky.  The casual aspect of reality falls away.  We become sharply aware of the Great Vision: the everything is One.

Now for the shadow.  Grand Canyon National Park is overrun by humans.  The infrastructure of the park is woefully inadequate to

Lot 2, from NPS

handle people in any great numbers.  There is nowhere to park.  Lots are full, and there are too few of them.  The bus shuttle system is inadequate.  Even if cars were banned from the park, and shuttles ran from points outside the park, with the current level of buses and number of visitors (6.25 million in 2017!) the system is bound to be so clogged that it will fail to work.

We walk by a crowded bus shelter.  An East Indian man is yelling at a bus attendant.  He is screaming; she is talking in low tones.  A few feet away stands a stoic security guard.  His hair is buzzed, he dons dark sunglasses, and he wears a black Kevlar vest, black 

It would grow worse

pants. From his stance, he has a military background.  His hand is on his waist, adjacent to his gun. Matters have reached this phase. The man is enraged because his party was not allow on the last bus.  Really?  Catch the next one.

Only later, as we wait for a bus after our rim hike, do I understand the man’s rage (although I do not feel it).  Under the bus shelter, a line snakes around barriers, like cattle in pen.  Buses arrive, but infrequently.  When they do, 85% of them are filled to capacity, and can only a sprinkle of passangers.

Here is the Canyon’s evil shadow, and of course it is cast by us – people – humanity as a hoard.  6.5 million of us want to gaze at the

Grand Canyon each year.  A noble impulse, true, but rife with ironies. If these people want nature, then go to Central Park. The Ramble is less crowded most days than they bus stop at Pima Point.  At least at The Ramble, you have the power to remove yourself from nature conveniently, and with dignity, rather than wait with irritated, hungry and tired Canyon Viewers.

The Canyon’s shadow side is the uncontested low point of the trip.  After the grand hike on the rim trail, the bottom of the bucket falls out, and our fears come to fruition. The lesson is clear: unless you exercise experimental sleight of hand, and separate your natural experience of Grand Canyon from the Shadow Experience of the Canyon overlooks, buses, parking lots, and angry people – there is little point to going at all.

This is the coda: we arrive at our “parking lot” after dark.  There only illumination is spectral and fleeting car headlights.  We walk down roads teeming with people, looking fort their cars as we look for ours.  Thankfully, my son marked the GPS location of our rental on his phone.  But he only has 5% power, so there is some urgency.  I supplement the search by pressing the car's panic button, to gauge how close we are.  Yes, it all came down to that.

The Park Department will not change a thing.  Attendance is up every year.  The towns around the park cater to tourists.  Everything is expensive.  You pay dear to few the Great Vision.  Sure, those dollars pay for fillings, college tuition, rent, and new mufflers.  People must make a living.  So there is unrelenting pressure is to keep the park open and full no matter how untenable visiting it actually is.  That will not change unless the amount of visitors precipitously drops. But by that time, it will be too late.  Is there a tipping point of visitors per year that will force even the most hardened hive people to stay away from the Grand Canyon?