Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 23
NOTHING PREPARES YOU for the Grand Canyon. No matter how many times you read
aboutitorseeitpictured,itstilltakesyourbreathaway.Yourmind,unabletodealwithany-
thing on this scale, just shuts down and for many long moments you are a human vacuum,
withoutspeechorbreath,butjustadeep,inexpressibleawethatanythingonthisearthcould
be so vast, so beautiful, so silent.
Even children are stilled by it. I was a particularly talkative and obnoxious child, but it
stopped me cold. I can remember rounding a corner and standing there agog while a mouth-
ful of half-formed jabber just rolled backwards down my throat, forever unuttered. I was
seven years old and I'm told it was only the second occasion in all that time that I had
stopped talking, apart from short breaks for sleeping and television. The one other thing to
silencemewasthesightofmygrandfatherdeadinanopencoffin.Itwassuchanunexpected
sight-noonehadtoldmethat hewouldbeondisplay-and itjusttookmybreath away.There
he was all still and silent, dusted with powder and dressed in a suit. I particularly remem-
ber that he had his glasses on (what did they think he was going to do with those where he
was going?) and that they were crooked. I think my grandmother had knocked them askew
during her last blubbery embrace and then everyone else had been too squeamish to push
thembackintoplace.Itwasashocktometorealizethatneveragaininthewholeofeternity
would he laugh over “I Love Lucy” or repair his car or talk with his mouth full (something
for which he was widely noted in the family). It was awesome.
But not nearly as awesome as the Grand Canyon. Since, obviously, I could never hope to
relive my grandfather's funeral, the Grand Canyon was the one vivid experience from my
childhood that I could hope to recapture, and I had been looking forward to it for many
days. I had spent the night at Winslow, Arizona, fifty miles short of Flagstaff, because the
roads were becoming almost impassable. In the evening the snow had eased to a scattering
of flakes and by morning it had stopped altogether, though the skies still looked dark and
pregnant. I drove through a snow-whitened landscape towards the Grand Canyon. It was
hard to believe that this was the last week of April. Mists and fog swirled about the road. I
could see nothing at the sides and ahead ofme except the occasional white smear ofoncom-
ing headlights. By the time I reached the entrance to Grand Canyon National Park, and paid
the five-dollar admission, snow was dropping heavily again, thick white flakes so big that
their undersides carried shadows.
The road through the park followed the southern lip of the canyon for thirty miles. Two or
three times I stopped in turnouts and went to the edge to peer hopefully into the silent murk,
