Journey Through America’s Wildest Canyon
Out of my Element in the Elements
When I climbed out of the wilderness after nine days rafting through the Grand Canyon, I was covered in sand, head to toe and between my teeth, my hair thick with silt, my clothes damp with muddy water.
I had been transformed into another creature—a river runner, a waterfall climber, a stemmer, a star-gilded sleeper who communes with snakes, spiders, big horn sheep, chum and scorpions, who swoons with blue herons, vultures, swallows and bats, crawling among prickly pear tuna, locust trees, cardinal monkey flowers, horsetail reeds and Proterozoic shiny black Vishnu Schist and Paleozoic Tapeats Sandstone.
I had learned to listen to the water of my own body and let it flow.
Fluent
I would love to live
Like a river flows
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
—John O’Donohue
Smoke, Spirit, and Setting Out
When we first arrived at the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, an ominous plume of smoke floated in through the canyon, concealing all views of the monolithic rock walls that I dearly adored. Choking on the heavy air, I walked to the rim, my eyes tearing from the poor air quality and the sight or lack of. I listened to the utterances of languages from around the world, imagining they shared my disappointment.
The North Rim was on fire.
A fire that had begun in Kaibab National Forest was mistakenly determined to be controllable and was allowed to burn. In recent years, while wildfires aren’t necessarily more frequent in the southwest, they have increased in severity due to more drought and higher winds. On this blazing hot day in mid-July, winds picked up the lashing flames and ripped through the park, destroying the historic North Rim lodge that my family and I had stayed in only a few years back.
I was deeply concerned. We had plans to spend the next 9 days without shelter in the depths of the Grand Canyon and I was struggling to stay outside for 30 minutes. I could only hope the atmosphere would clear before morning when we were to make the 7-mile-long descent down to the Colorado River along the Bright Angel Trail.
