“I went out behind the barn and stared down in that hole
Late into the evening my mind would not let go
So I got out my ropes and a rusty claw-foot tub
And I rigged myself a chariot to ride down in that hole
My wife, she did help me, she fed me down the ropes
And then I sank away from the surface of this world
With the last rope pulled tight, I had not reached the end
And in anger I swung there, down in that dark abyss
So I got out my knife, I told my wife goodbye
I cut loose from the ropes and fell on down that hole
And still I am there falling down in this evil pit
But until I hit the bottom, I won’t believe it’s bottomless”
–The Handsome Family, “The Bottomless Hole”
The sun rises, yet again. A truck plows on through gasping when it reaches the top of the pass, followed by the belching of the compression brakes as, without relent, the truck switches from climbing to diving. From desert to mountains to desert without respite. Connecting one lonely town to another across the barren dust scorched emptiness–cities of the plain battling with nature and time in the distant world below. Silence descends again, the wind rustles sweetly, a signal that the coast is clear of human intervention. Songbirds, taking the cue, can be heard skittering among the branches of the pine above our tent, chittering and chatting away. A chipmunk, likely, drops remnants of a pinecone on our tent flap; breakfast of champions. Kristen rustles and lets out a yawning yip as she stretches. I try to extend my legs, but I feel the tight constraints of my mummy sleeping bag trapping me in my soft sleeping sarcophagus. I rub my legs together reenacting that morning ritual of kicking the sheets off, but find myself too confined, and I imagine I look like a dog trying to run in his sleep only to find his legs hogtied. The sand from yesterday grates between my legs, pumice stone-esque. It still sticks everywhere; sugar sand and fine soft red clay pasted to our skin as though we fell in quicksand and let it harden in the sun. I can feel puddles of sand in every corner of my sleeping bag. My brain has that hazy fog and slight ache–not unlike a mild hangover–that comes with multiple nights without deep sleep along with moderate dehydration. My back has that subtle ache reminding me how close I am to planet earth. As much as I love camping, it comes with a certain level of endless grogginess and back pain that, if not treated by a suitable afternoon hammock siesta, can be grating and lead to a certain amount of grumpiness that likens me to one of those characters from a Snickers diva commercial. A shower, memory foam bed, and a gallon of cold water could solve all the world’s problems right about now; I’ll only get one of those.
Although we have been sitting, essentially, on the edge of the Grand Canyon for the last few nights, we have yet to go and see it. Today is the day. Normally, my first visit to such a famous, beautiful world wonder would have me giddy with anticipation, but, for some reason I cannot quite put my finger on, I am a bit melancholy. I have been thinking about the Grand Canyon nonstop for days, months even; it has always been one of the focal points of the trip. But, now that a lifetime of dreams and anticipation are about to meet reality, something just seems off. It would be easy to blame the lack of sleep or desert dehydration–as we pack up we are both exhausted and laggard from our desert jaunt the day before–but, I guess, I just plan to be…unimpressed. The Grand Canyon is just one of those places that almost everyone, at least in the United States, has ‘seen’ before. It is an icon, a wonder. It is in movies, documentaries, postcards, ads, books, magazines; I don’t think you can live in the United States and claim ignorance to our grandest grandeur. Of course, the fact that it is in the public consciousness comes as a double edge sword. One can’t help but feel that one has, in some way at least, ‘seen’ the Grand Canyon before. And, obviously, being a world wonder means people, endless people. A hundred years of exploitation and popularity surely equates to ‘amusement park’. Plus, how ‘grand’ can it really be? I’ve seen a lot of canyons before, can there really be that much of a chasm in grandeur between those and this grandest of canyons?
Maybe it was the early morning cookie stop at the Jacob Lake Bakery or even the bag of ice we also bought (and the associated ice cold water we have been drinking all morning; you really take for granted such amenities as an ice maker until you have been driking water that has been sitting in the sun in a car in a desert for a week straight), but, when we reach the first pull off for our first view of the canyon, I am completely reinvigorated by the world. My emotions are…confused. Mixed. There is awe, absolutely. Annoyance, certainly. Vertigo, indescribably so. But, ultimately, it is amazing. And, yes, simply put, Grand. My assumptions that having seen pictures or film of the Grand Canyon would somehow diminish the ecstasy of seeing it in person seem silly, quaint really. What everyone says is true: you NEED to see it for yourself. You need to feel that sense of your own minuity beside this cavernous snakish monster to understand the Grand Canyon and yourself. Truly, I am sad it has taken me almost 40 years to experience this wonder.
Immediately, I am forcing Kristen to agree to plans to come back and actually ‘experience’ the canyon. To climb down into its belly, to let it engulf us. That singeing electricity and energy that I get when I arrive in a new and fascinating place is sizzling through my veins. I want to do every hike, I want to climb down, I want to explore every nook and crevice of this crevasse. Kristen just smiles, nods, and follows. Always the good sport, she agrees to whatever insane hiking or planned recreation I want, subtly attempting to bring my plans back to earth–or at least the canyon rim. I’m ready to climb down to the edge of the Colorado River, 5,000 feet vertical down and 5,000 feet vertical back up. She just gives that cat-like smile and suggests maybe we just climb a little ways down and see how we feel, noting that the ranger board said it was 108 degrees at the bottom–a far cry from the coolth of the pleasant 70 degree temperature up here on the rim. My mind is racing all over. I am making her promise to bring our families back, we can all splurge and stay at the lodge, watch sunrise and sunset from our cabin. Then, her and I can do the rim to rim hike as they drive from the North to South rim. We will arrive to congratulations and celebratory cold beer. It will be an epic. Smile and nods. We walk a number of the short rim-side trails at the end of the road, take in the views, note the rapidly rising temperature. Although there are a fair number of tourists, it never feels overwhelming–annoying at times–but never does it impinge on the experience. As with any park, hiking an extra quarter mile beyond the first lookout leaves you alone with nature. I think, too, that coming to the North Rim, which receives a fraction of the tourists as the South Rim, has likely greatly enhanced my first experience of this place–I quietly thank something, anything for the road closures that detoured us up here and away from the buses and lines of the South Rim. After exhausting the handful of short walks around the North Rim, lethargy and hunger return. We stop at an empty pull off with a few picnic tables and set up a pancake making station. What better place to enjoy a picnic brunch than the edge of the greatest pit on earth? Under the shade of a copse of tall pines, we nibble pancakes, sip coffee, and attempt to comprehend the seemingly bottomless hole that surrounds us.
As much as I am enthralled by the Grand Canyon, it has also created some type of existential schism in my mind that I cannot shake. Being scientifically minded, I try to compartmentalize everything, create order from chaos through understanding–no matter how superficial. The Grand Canyon just creates a problem of scale; it is too grand to comprehend. The artistic side of me wants to say that is what makes it so beautiful, mesmerizing–it defies comprehension. The scientific part of me keeps asking why, how? It just does not seem feasible or plausible, it doesn’t seem like it should exist. Somehow, someway it just sort of…irks me? I mean, I get it: the north rim lies on a rift and was raised above the south rim through shifting tectonic plates, then the Colorado River did its magic over eons eroding the canyon deeper and deeper, the rain and snow does the rest deepening and widening the canyon as time marches on. But, really, how? I can’t comprehend an ‘eon’. And, why here? The Grand Canyon just seems to open this existential dilemma in my brain that requires endless meditation to comprehend. I keep repeating the geological methods, a skipping record in my brain that keeps sending the needle back to the starting point. I spend the entire morning trying to comprehend the how and why and why nots (why not over there through that plateau we crossed yesterday, how grand would it have been if we were around 200,000 years ago-would it just have been any old valley?, if humans and this fragile planet actually exist in another 500,000 years will it be 10,000 feet deep?…).
There is just something so incomprehensible about the whole thing that is annoying to my puny ability to comprehend existence. As we tiptoe around the edge of the void, part of me wants to avoid this bottomless pit at all costs. It is not just the vertigo, but something more, something deeper, darker, as though there is a beast lurking in the shadows of the canyon waiting to suck me into the incomprehensibility of its infinite depths. Or, maybe, perhaps more intimidatingly, it is the emptiness of nothingness that waits at the opposite end of existence. I know all of these thoughts verge on the absurd, but staring into the cleft rock my mind seems to be fluttering in a freefall from the light of the canyon edge to the darkness of the canyon depths like a buzzard soaring on a thermal that suddenly dissipates leaving the hapless creature careening towards its demise. My fascination with Mark Danielewski’s book ‘House of Leaves’ keeps coming to mind here; it feels as though anytime humans are confronted with something beyond comprehension we feel a need to determine the extent of it, the depths of our lack of understanding (which is embodied by the maze and minotaur of the book that consume the protagonists). We have to get to the bottom of things; the fear of the infinite is innate. There is an unsettling aspect to incomprehension, if we cannot put something into a tidy box of understanding it can naw on us from the inside out. No matter how hard we try to just file ‘the infinite’ away, try to ignore it, the lid always pops off eventually. I guess some call that box ‘God’ and are willing to fight to the death to maintain that belief, atheists call it ‘nature’ and shrug their shoulders, scientists call it ‘the Big Bang’ and pretend that they can measure it. But, no matter the label, there is an incompleteness to each theory that reminds us of our limitedness, feebleness, and, ultimately, soon to be nothingness. That infinite-nothingness dichotomy can be liberating or burdensome (see Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’), but deep contemplation of the extremes of existence are always, seemingly, fraught with terror yet singed with excitement. The danger lies in letting the pull of that contemplation become all-consuming; if you admit defeat at the start and treat contemplation of the infinite as a glimpse into the unknowable, it can be enlightening. But, there is, I think, a danger in thinking you can understand, tidy up, the bounds of our existence. You can get sucked into something that is all consuming just because there is no end, no solution, and, potentially, no way out. To me, that is the moral of ‘House of Leaves’ and the Handsome Family song ‘The Bottomless Hole’. By being arrogant enough to think that we can ever fully comprehend the incomprehensible–to figure out the ‘meaning of life’, so to speak–is bound to lead you down a path teeming with vertigo and you may never find your way back. I suppose, maybe, that is the essence of existentialism–exploring the limits, meaning, and purpose of our own existence as far as we can comprehend–but, eventually, you must give up and either admit defeat at infinity or get lost in the maze of the absurdity of ‘reality’. Then, this line of thinking inevitably leads me into the dilemma of reality, whether what we live and perceive is any more real than what we dream or imagine–or what I like to call the ‘Waking Life’ (or, framed slightly differently, in terms of the perspective aspect of what makes reality, maybe the ‘Horton Hears a Who’) enigma. But, if anyone is still reading, I will save you from the maze that is my thoughts on the role of dreams and perspectives in forming ‘reality’. Needless to say, the Grand Canyon is unleashing a Pandora’s box of non-understanding inside of me; the top has come off my tidy box of knowledge. Maybe it is the mix of sleepless delirium and vertigo, but I feel the need to step back from the edge. I am ready to go.
We complete one final walk and decide to save a deeper exploration for a dedicated return trip. As we are leaving the parking lot, we spot an abandoned pile of store bought firewood next to the car. Kristen’s thriftiness is pleased, we tie the wood to the roof rack, and leave on a high note. On the way out I recall seeing a drive-up primitive campground on the canyon rim out a ways on a long dirt road, but still inside the park. We decide to stop by the backcountry office and inquire, but the ranger tells us that no permits are being given out for backcountry travel due to COVID. However, she notes that the Kaibab National Forest, which engulfs the National Park on almost all sides, has an endless supply of locations where you are allowed to disperse camp along the hundreds of miles of canyon rim. She hands us a map with a few suggestions circled and we drive back out the park, gas up at the one conveniently located country store that luckily happens to be at the entrance to the main set of forest roads heading west along the canyon rim, and hit the backcountry.
Although the National Park is amazing, my best advice for the Grand Canyon would be to just head straight for the Kaibab National Forest and explore. Of course, it helps to have 4WD, though many of the main roads and overlooks are accessible on well grated and packed gravel roads. There are hundreds of miles of biking and hiking trails, endless options for free dispersed camping in the woods or perched above the canyon rim, and, best of all, you will have the entire canyon to yourself for endless vistas of sunrises and sunsets. After losing ourselves in endless spur roads, we settle on a little spot called ‘The Crazy Jug’ to spend the afternoon and evening. We park in the shade of a couple small trees, set up camp, and I walk down to the canyon rim to complete my philosophizing in the only fitting way I know how–from the comfort of my hammock.
But, the Grand Canyon has not finished with its life lessons for me. After a few minutes spent finding the perfect spot (and, as it turns out, luckily not too close to the canyon edge), I toss my hammock between two trees and set everything up for a few hours of contemplation: book, check; beer, check; backcountry, check. I feel satiated from my compromise with my own incomprehension of this mighty canyon. However, as I ease my heft into the swaying nylon of the hammock, I hear a strange sound–zpp zpp zppzing–not unlike a zipper being unzipped. In a day full of it, I do not quite comprehend what I hear and decide I have no more synapses left to waste on thinking about it. So, I take a big chug of my miller lite, soak in the vastless expanse of the canyon in front of me, and crack open my book ready for a mental break. I am probably exaggerating and revising the facts for the sake of the story, but in my mind I comprehended the meaning of that sound, almost comically, just as it was too late. There was a brief sensation of a free fall, a bruising thump, a slight roll, and there I was on the ground, covered in sand, staring at a small cactus, yet somehow still holding my beer in the air as though it was a precious child. Just as quickly, a searing pain caught up with my slowly firing neurons, telling me about that small stump over which I had placed my hammock along with the handful of small rocks that littered the ground I had just become intimate with. I took another, bigger swig of my beer and slowly made my way to my feet, even more dazed and woozy than I had been 2 minutes before. Letting out a couple hoots of pain, I bent and stretched and rubbed and hopped around trying to rid my body of the unpleasant sensation of pain. After a few minutes of reintroducing my different body parts to the world of the living, picking out small pebbles that were indented in my skin, and brushing out dirt from a few small scrapes, I finally contemplated the chaotic scene presented to me. The indestructible parachute material of my hammock was flapping in the breeze like a tattered battlefield flag, torn down the seam from end to end, the section where my head used to be lounging now hanging on by a literal thread. My bruised behind seemed like a final, lasting lesson ensuring I remember that no matter how close I think I am to being able to understand and predict the nature of things, I am really just a small thread away from complete incomprehension–and two short barrel rolls from falling into the infinite abyss.
Stumbling back to camp, bloody and bruised, I regale Kristen with the ridiculousness of my story and bring her back to the scene of my mind’s resolution–my own small tribute to Newton, I suppose. The tattered tumultuous remains of my fragile human presence seems almost comically insignificant in comparison to the steadfast endurance of the canyon beyond. We can’t help but laugh at the scene. Then, bravely, Kristen sets up her own hammock, as though to prove that there is no ‘fate’ to tempt. The rest of the night is uneventful, as far as watching a cloudless sunset over one of the world’s most beautiful natural wonders–no one within miles–can be considered uneventful. Our only regret being that we can’t spend longer and need to pack up in the morning.
However, to emphasize the incongruity and ridiculousness of my entire experience at the Grand Canyon, another truck pulls up the next morning as I am pooping in the woods. As I try to rush to finish my morning routine, I hear Kristen talking amicably to the newcomer. I come over a small rise to enter the campsite and join the conversation. The man, probably in his 70s, is a Korean War veteran that lives in a nearby town and spends his days hiking, biking, and exploring the forest around here. He seems like a nice enough senior citizen, active with sun spotted skin. We converse for 20 minutes or so before he departs to take in the view, letting us know we chose one of the best camp sites on the rim. Everything seems dandy until he reaches into his truck and turns around wearing a red Trump ‘Make America Great Again’ hat; I can see Kristen’s smile fade as he meanders down the path. We finalize our packing in silence. After a few minutes he returns and it is as though we have entered into some new, murky dimension or bizarro world without realizing we had crossed the threshold. Before getting in his truck, he calls out and launches into a tirade about how it is too bad we can’t see the whole park due to the ‘Chinese Virus’. Through gritted teeth we try to nod and smile and say it is fine, but, fresh off his morning coffee watching ‘Fox and Friends’ he does not seem satiated with the short outburst. He begins to pontificate about how Coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab and unleashed as a biological weapon on the United States and how if it wasn’t for Trump we would all be dead by now. It turns out the wheel’s were barely hinged and have now completely fallen off the wagon. Trying to be as polite as possible we pantomime that we are all packed up and need to get on the road, but he continues on. I tell Kristen to jump in the car and I wave goodbye before jumping in myself and starting the roar of the fordosaurus to block out his incoherent ramblings.
The encounter is just a final final reminder of the enigmatic nature of this place, this world. How can someone spouting Trumpian Fox News blatant racism act so normal and otherwise kind to someone like Kristen that is clearly of a similar background as the target of his racist language? There is apparently some disconnect between words and thoughts–the instantized nature of today’s media cycle. If we hear a ‘news’ bit spouted enough times, then it becomes fact–no matter how disassociated that ‘fact’ is from any sort of rational reality. And, we no longer take the time to think about the implications of those ‘facts’, they are just words. I doubt this seemingly kind old man was any sort of blatant racist or had any hatred for Kristen or Chinese people generally (of course, I could also be projecting and he might be filled with simmering anti-Asian bigotry, perhaps ingrained during his stint in the Korean War?). But, he had been told over and over that COVID was manufactured by the Chinese and that they were our enemy–Cold War era type propaganda that seemed to be oozing out of every Republican media mouthpiece, useless spittle from insignificant blowhards–and he couldn’t help but voice his displeasure at all of the inconveniences created by these perceived enemies. The Grand Canyon imparted a slough of tough lessons and harsh realities about the world we live in and the world man has created.
Leave a Reply