Part 10: Heading Home

Part 10: Heading Home “Anything you have read about the Grand Canyon is a lie. Language falters and dies before the fact. The experience is inexpressible in words. The Grand Canyon is its own language written across space, causality and time. See how puny these words are. Do not believe them. Go there.” – Amil…

Part 9: Take Out

Part 9: Take Out “Too many times we stand aside and let the waters slip away, until what we put off ’til tomorrow has now become today. So don’t you sit upon the shoreline and say you’re satisfied, choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance the tide.” – Garth Brooks, The River Ugh.…

Part 8: The Lower Canyon, Days 12-13

Part 8: The Lower Canyon, Days 12-13 “One hundred and seventy-nine miles downstream from Lee’s Ferry, directly below Toroweap Overlook, the greatest river in the West runs up against a picket line of submerged boulders, roars over the edge, and detonates. This is Lava Falls, a quarter-mile stretch of white water that is considered by…

Part 6: The Lower Canyon, Days 8-9

Part 6: The Lower Canyon, Days 8-9 “When your spirit cries for peace, come to a world of canyons deep in an old land; feel the exultation of high plateaus, the strength of moving water, the simplicity of sand and grass, and the silence of growth.” – August Fruge The sound of an irritated rattlesnake…

Part 5: The Lower Canyon, Days 6-8

Part 5: The Lower Canyon, Days 6-8 “In this sometimes turbulent world, the river is a cosmic symbol of durability and destiny; awesome, but steadfast. I wish everyone could live for a while beside a great river.” – Helen Hayes The Colorado River is a 1,450 mile long river in North America that begins at…

Part 4: The Upper Canyon, Days 5-6

Part 4: The Upper Canyon, Days 5-6 “The glories and the beauties of form, color, and sound unite in the Grand Canyon – forms unrivaled even by the mountains, colors that vie with sunsets, and sounds that span the diapason from tempest to tinkling raindrop, from cataract to bubbling fountain.” – John Wesley Powell Major…

Part 3: The Upper Canyon, Days 2-4

Part 3: The Upper Canyon, Days 2-4 “I do not believe that any man can adequately appreciate the world of to-day unless he has some knowledge of — a little more than a slight knowledge, some feeling for and of — the history of the world of the past.” – Theodore Roosevelt Warning, this one…

Part 2: The Upper Canyon, Day 1

Part 2: The Upper Canyon, Day 1 “Nothing prepares you for the Grand Canyon. No matter how many times you read about it or see it pictured, it still takes your breath away. Your mind, unable to deal with anything on this scale, just shuts down and for many long moments you are a human…