Travel Reference
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knowing that the canyon was out there, just beyond my nose, but I couldn't see anything.
The fog was everywhere-threaded among the trees, adrift on the roadsides, rising steamily
off the pavement. It was so thick I could kick holes in it. Glumly I drove on to the Grand
Canyon village, where there was a visitors' center and a rustic hotel and a scattering of ad-
ministrative buildings. There were lots of tour buses and recreational vehicles in the park-
inglotsandpeoplehangingaroundinentrancewaysorpickingtheirwaythroughtheslushy
snow,goingfromonebuildingtoanother.Iwentandhadanoverpricedcupofcoffeeinthe
hotel cafeteria and felt damp and dispirited. I had really been looking forward to the Grand
Canyon. I sat by the window and bleakly watched the snow pile up.
Afterwards,Itrudgedtowardsthevisitors'center,perhapsZooyardsaway,butbeforeIgot
thereIcameacrossasnowspatteredsignannouncingalookoutpointhalfamileawayalong
a trail through the woods, and impulsively I went down it, mostly just to get some air. The
path was slippery and took a long time to traverse, but on the way the snow stopped falling
and the air felt clean and refreshing. Eventually I came to a platform of rocks, marking the
edge of the canyon. There was no fence to keep you back from the edge, so I shuffled cau-
tiously over and looked down, but could see nothing but gray soup. A middle-aged couple
camealongandaswestoodchattingaboutwhatadispiritingexperiencethiswas,amiracu-
lous thing happened. The fog parted. It just silently drew back, like a set of theater curtains
being opened, and suddenly we saw that we were on the edge of a sheer, giddying drop of
at least a thousand feet. “Jesus!” we said and jumped back, and all along the canyon edge
you could hear people saying, “Jesus!” like a message being passed down a long line. And
then for many moments all was silence, except for the tiny fretful shiftings of the snow,
because out there in front of us was the most awesome, most silencing sight that exists on
earth.
The scale of the Grand Canyon is almost beyond comprehension. It is ten miles across, a
mile deep, 180 miles long. You could set the Empire State Building down in it and still be
thousandsoffeetaboveit.IndeedyoucouldsetthewholeofManhattandowninsideitand
you would still be so high above it that buses would be like ants and people would be in-
visible, and not a sound would reach you. The thing that gets you-that gets everyone-is the
silence.TheGrandCanyonjustswallowssound.Thesenseofspaceandemptinessisover-
whelming. Nothing happens out there. Down below you on the canyon floor, far, far away,
is the thing that carved it: the Colorado River. It is 300 feet wide, but from the canyon's lip
it looks thin and insignificant. It looks like an old shoelace. Everything is dwarfed by this
mighty hole.
Andthen,justasswiftly,justassilentlyasthefoghadparted,itclosedagainandtheGrand
Canyonwasasecretoncemore.Ihadseenitfornomorethantwentyorthirtyseconds,but
