Grand Canyon

Driving past signs for towns that list their founding dates, us Northeasterners chortle. These cities and towns weren’t even in existence when our towns were celebrating centennials, bicentennials, but their national monuments got us beat. They don't count their years of existence in the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or even bare millions.

Hundreds of millions of years of glacially slow change and construction stretch before you, etched in layers in the rock. It is older than those of us who can appreciate, but still not quite describe it. The entire recorded history of humanity started when this bastard was nearly the same as it is today. The Grand Canyon.

Seriously, a picture is not even worth a thousand words here, a picture isn't worth 5 seconds of actually being there and seeing it. It's immense. It's mindboggling. It's awe-inspiring. It makes you feel so very very small, and lifts you up at the same time.

Some of the rocks down near the bottom, just might have gotten there two billion years ago. That was a B there. Billion. I am a long time away from natural science textbooks, but a glance at the guides available at one of the visitors center, with their brackets pointing to different types of rock, and the different amounts of years suggested by each of these divisions...makes me look at geology in a whole different way.

For some reason, I always thought of it as a study of the properties of the minerals themselves, but I see it in such a bigger picture now. It's about mapping the history of our planet, and being as we have been there for such a small part of it, we can only pull together unspeaking clues to figure it out. The Grand Canyon, and a lot of the southwest it seems, offers clear markers by which we can measure the evolution, not of life, but of the globe it all exists upon.

Also, it's darn purty. We take the requisite dozens of pictures. Nothing sets off the majestic eternity of the vista of the Grand Canyon like capturing Butterscotch and Snake-Eyes having a slap-fight on a cliff-edge in front of it.

We hike down about an hour's worth, and the return journey takes what feels like twice that. I curse every extra unhealthy thing I've ever done, or at least I would if I had any breath. Not to worry though, the guide handed out at the visitors center declares that people fall over the side "surprisingly rarely." Not the most reassuring combination of adverbs I've ever seen.

By the time we get back to the top, sunset is dangerously close. As we racing down a winding road to get to a lookout point for sunset, I put on some Ennio Morricone. It seemed like the thing to do.