Empty Sky
What we will do without the Hemlocks?

A little Edward Abbey for inspiration ...

Forty Years as a Canyoneer

In the summer of 1944 a Pennsylvania farm boy, seventeen, about to be drafted into the Army of the United States, hitchhiked around the USA to see for the first time the nation he was being asked to go to war for. Headed east from California , returning home, he took a detour at Williams, Arizona , for the sixty-mile side trip to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon . Traffic was sparse in those wartime days but he managed to hitch a ride. One mile south of the Canyon he had the driver stop and let him out. "But I'm going right to the Rim," the driver said. "Yes sir," the boy said, "but I think I'd rather walk."

That boy was myself (as I recall) and his reason for wanting to walk the final mile rather than ride may not be easy to explain. It has something to do with what Wordsworth called "natural piety." Even then, in my callow adolescence, it seemed to me somehow disrespectful, even irreverent, even blasphemous to ride to the edge of the Grand Canyon seated on one's backside inside an upholstered, jiggling, clanking, mechanical contraption like the automobile. I preferred to approach the Canyon through the woods, away from the road, mounted on nothing but my own two feet. I wanted to see this great sanctuary of space and form and color as the Indians had seen it, as the Spanish explorers had seen it in the early sixteenth century, as the first Americans had seen it -- suddenly. Without official notice.

Keeping the afternoon sun on my left, I walked northeasterly through the ponderosa and jack pine, through the fragrance of the trees, over the matted carpet of pine needles, toward the bright shining openness that waited ahead. I carried a rolled-up blanket slung across my shoulders, like the hobo that I was that summer, a little canvas satchel in one hand, and a canteen of water. I crossed the former road that ran through the woods to the east, walked another half mile, and arrived as I had hoped, suddenly, upon the edge of things. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado , no more and no less, lay before me.

I stood a little east of Mather Point, on a part of the South Rim which at that time had not yet suffered the development that was to come. To my right, a mile beyond the Pipe Creek amphitheater, was Yaki Point, and below were the great drop-offs of the Kaibab, Coconino, and Redwall formations, leading eye and mind and heart down, down, down, down to the Tonto Bench, to the Inner Gorge, to the hidden river. Taken all in all, I found it a satisfying spectacle, and if I'd been as naturally pious as one should be at this place, I would have gone down on my knees and meditated in reverent silence. Instead, to tell the truth, the first thing I did was urinate off the rim onto a little aspen tree waiting patiently below. It was a semiconscious act, no offense meant, signifying a claim to territoriality. But I have belonged to the Grand Canyon ever since, possessing and possessed by the spirit of the place.

In the summer of 1949 I camped for five weeks down in a branch of the Grand Canyon called Havasupai Canyon , now famous for its Indian village and splendid waterfalls, but then little known. Almost unknown. Six years later I took my wife Rita there for a second honeymoon. By the verge of Havasu Falls under the light of a desert moon, quite deliberately, we conceived our first child. In 1961 I worked as a firefighter and fire lookout on the North Rim -- among those magic forests and meadows -- and did the same in 1968, 1969, and 1970. In 1963 I fell recklessly in love with a girl who lived in Grand Canyon village. (After a summer of passion she left me for another man -- her husband.) In 1967 I worked as a river ranger at Lee's Ferry at the head of the Grand Canyon and made the first of several voyages down the Colorado , through the heart of the Canyon (The Canyon as its lovers call it) to its terminal necrosis in Lake Meade . Later, I wrote a novel about love, death, mystery and -- the Grand Canyon . Three years ago I acquired a patch of otherwise utterly worthless rock and sand that overlooks, from high on a cliff, a stretch of the Grand Canyon ; I plan to build a secret home there. And in almost every year between 1944 and now I have made at least one descent into the Canyon, often by the classic routes of the Kaibab and Bright Angel Trails, and at other times down secondary, tertiary, primitive pathways, obscure and unreliable, such as the Nankoweap, Boucher, Tanner, and Thunder River. (The last-named trail leads to the world's shortest river: from its source in the caverns called Thunder Springs to its junction with Tapeats Creek and the Colorado , Thunder River is one-half mile long. It is also the only river which disappears into a creek.)

Because of this long association, spanning four decades with yet more to come, I claim ownership of the Grand Canyon . Not exclusive ownership. I am happy to share with all who come here, whether they approach in the mood of semisolemn reverence, as I did, or like the schoolgirl I saw the other day, stepping onto the terrace of Bright Angel Lodge for the first time in her life, who took one swift glance down into the wonder of the ages, exclaimed "Neat-o!" and returned to the curio shop to buy postcards. The Grand Canyon belongs to all -- and to no one. When my own turn comes to lie down, die, and decay, nourishing in the process some higher form of life -- a clump of sage, a coyote, a prickly pear, a pissed-on aspen tree -- I hope the blessed event takes place high on a canyon rim, with a final vision of red cliffs, magenta buttes, and purple mesas in my fading eyes.

Meanwhile -- the great Canyon endures. It was here before humankind was even a twig on the evolutionary tree of life and it will be here when we are gone. The Canyon endures the trifling business of humans as it does the industry of ants, the trickle-down erosion of storm and ice, the transient insult of upstream dams. Those things shall pass, the Canyon will outlive them all.

A humbling thought? Not necessarily. The grandeur of the Canyon confers dignity on every form of life that touches it. Through our love, requited or not, we share in its beauty, power, glory, and sublimity. It is an honor to be a visitor at the Grand Canyon of the Colorado , as it is an honor and a privilege to be alive, however briefly, on this rare, sweet, delicate, one and only planet we call Earth.