Even now, miles and years away from her, I hear her siren song.
It was early July and I had just completed a 47-day bicycle ride from Seattle to Atlantic City. My fiancé welcomed me warmly at the airport in Phoenix.
I had already signed a contract for a third season at the North Rim Clinic when she announced her decision.
She wouldn’t drive up to visit me again at the Grand Canyon, and might not be waiting for me when I returned in October. Thus, the Ultimatum: I must choose— the Grand Canyon or her.
I’ll always be glad for the choice I made.
If I had chosen The Canyon, I would have missed out on seeing Joe learn to swim, ride his bike, would have missed long conversations about everything and nothing, hikes and campfires under Arizona skies.
Twenty years is not nearly enough time to love a son.
I will admit there were times I wished I had chosen The Canyon. The Canyon was always calling.
Barry Goldwater said, “If I had a mistress, it would be the Grand Canyon.”
I chose to stay in the city, get married, start a family. My wife’s fear was that I would leave for someone younger. I was faithful. That would not happen.
Many evenings I would pore over guidebooks and maps imagining another canyon adventure.
I still wonder if my Canyon obsession was an infidelity. The Canyon seduces.
She always seduces.
No femme fatale has ever been as attractive, as enticing to me as that scorched and shadowy chasm.
I dream of Monument Creek, Hermit’s Rest, Lava Falls, the Esplanade, turquoise waters of Havasupai. I dream of solitude and silence surrounded by ancient rock.
When has Life ever offered a perfect choice?
My lover is beautiful, deep, mysterious, endlessly intriguing. She is mesmerizing, capricious, and dangerous.
Peaceful, warm, loving one minute, the next, violent, even malicious.
There are three kinds of people who love the Grand Canyon:
Some visit her, traipse along her rim, watch her like a TV show. They take a few pictures, eat lunch at the lodge, go home and check her off the bucket list. They tell their friends, “I’ve been to the Grand Canyon.” Some even say, “What’s the deal? It’s just a hole in the ground.”
A few penetrate a little— they hike Bright Angel Trail to Phantom Ranch or run Rim-to-Rim in a day— one-night stands who check one more item off their list and brag, “I’ve hiked the Grand Canyon.”
Finally, there are those who visit her and feel pain when they have to leave. The ones who want that endless kiss, who get lost inside her, returning over and over, each time feeling they haven’t had enough.
The ones who, whenever they are away, are haunted by her song, relentlessly yearning for her embrace.
We are the ones who suffer for her. We protect her, nurture her, explore her. We sacrifice relationships, fame, fortune for her. We give up everything for one more second with her. We are infected, dangerously obsessed.
The Canyon makes us cry with her beauty, takes our breath away with her grandeur. We sing, and The Canyon echoes.
Nights begin in earnest when white light shimmers like a satin gown.
Lucy rarely makes sense, but in the big scheme, details don’t matter much when the sky stares with evergreen eyes that glimmer like diamonds on velvet.
Sterling silver soul offered in sanguine sacrifice.
While living on the north rim, I woke each morning to gaze deeply into the heaven and hell that is the Grand Canyon carved by the mighty Colorado.
Each week pedaling my bike through desert heat and desiccating wind to Point Imperial and Cape Royal, my breath stolen by dry desert air, gazing through Angels Window a vertical mile down into the grand abyss, the ruddy river, a mere thread in tortured desert fabric.
Off in the distance: Painted Desert, Mount Hayden, Vishnu Temple, Wotan’s throne, Cheops pyramid,
Warmed by sun-drenched stone, my fascination with those isolated destinations is far outweighed by my yearning for the journeys the locations beckoned but the solitude seduced.
Existentialism says: “We need to find meaning in inherently meaningless life.”
Christianity proclaims: “Humankind is inflicted with temptation and imperfection.”
Other philosophies admit life’s fundamental pessimism. Each in their own way concedes suffering is the breath of reality.
The universe— a frozen lake— is indifferent to life’s tragedy.
The unblinking sky knows philosophy finds true power in acknowledging the pessimisms— grappling with them so we can survive within the ache that lets us know we’re alive.
Because it favored me, life asks for rewards a gift, a privilege, not a right. Once awarded, I must continue to earn it through honesty and discipline.
The pen.—The page.— The unfinished lines—reminders that I am alive.
I wish it could, but writing cannot rescue us from hardship, age, or death, still, with each sentence, it revives.
Desert Dweller 