Living Like Grand Canyon - A Nature Photo Essay
I live near the Grand Canyon. Finally. For now.
Like most things in my life (so far), I never planned to live in this location. Due to other unplanned circumstances, I first visited Grand Canyon for a wilderness backpacking trip. I happened to be in Arizona at that time, and knew a friend living in the area with whom I'd backpacked before and who knew the ways of desert backcountry survival. So he planned the excursion, and it all happened so fast that I don't even remember entering Grand Canyon National Park. All I remember of the trip start is hiking down the trail from Grandview Point with our backpacks, marveling at how the trail was seemingly pinned to the face of cliffs.
Several days and only one rattlesnake later, we were hiking up the South Kaibab Trail. It was early April, but felt hot. I experienced some symptoms of heat exhaustion by hiking too fast.
Then I was absent from the Canyon for almost 20 years. I was back East where I'd come from, thrashing around mostly in Ohio. Sometimes I wonder why. But finally I ejected myself from there, moving to northern Arizona without a job, but with a bit of retirement money that could be cashed in with heavy penalty. I did.
It was not the smoothest of transitions, but after several months I found a rental house west of Flagstaff that seemed perfect. It was perfect, at the time and state I was in.
Surrounded by millions of acres of Kaibab National Forest land, I bought a new chainsaw, and a wood cutting permit, and set about reconnecting with my woodsman roots. I cut so much firewood that it became something of a local landmark. ("You mean the place with all the wood? Yeah, I know where that is.")
But perfection is personal and ever evolving. After a couple of years of solitude, I was broke and desperate for a more budgetable income. I found one within a month. Or maybe it found me. I was hired by a Grand Canyon river rafting company. Not as a river guide. I had no experience in that. I was the new office assistant, talking to potential and booked customers on the phones, helping them to reserve and then pack for their river trip.
Once again I'd seemly stumbled and bumbled my way into an exciting new situation. I was once again earning a regular paycheck. It was a sliver of the paycheck I used to get when I quit my job in Ohio, but it was like a drowning person being thrown a life preserver. But that's only the start. It was in Flagstaff, and--by gosh--it was outdoors related. I would be able to see how one of the premier Grand Canyon river running companies was run, from the inside out. I would get to know the river guides. And I would get to share my love of nature, of this particular part of the West, with customers who often had no clue as to what they were about to undertake.
So I learned about the river trip details as fast as I could. Some of the trips involve hiking the Bright Angel Trail, so I hiked it myself in order to photograph and video it. Which returned me to my backcountry hiking roots, even though they were not overnight backpacking trips. But they were desert trips. I was applying what I'd learned about the latest medical advice on desert hiking.
I seem to have come to realize that I am maturing. That wasn't planned, either. No matter. Hiking the Canyon (actually an immense complex of canyons), and now floating down the Colorado with seasoned river guides, has both increased my anticipation and soothed my fears. Fears of what? Of someplace so immense as Grand Canyon. Of camping for a week with strangers in conditions where privacy is almost non existent. Of making a fool of myself due to not knowing what I was doing.
Thus I was the perfect experimental customer. A newbie river rafting customer prototype. With all of my backcountry experience, perhaps I had even more angst than typical out-of-it newbie tourists, because I didn't want to get it wrong in front of customers. Or guides.
I managed to get it mostly right on my first trip down the Canyon. More importantly, I took scores of great photos and video clips, and came back infinitely more confident while talking on the phone to customers fretting about getting it right.
And I've only been working for Canyoneers for a few months. Often I have to remind myself of that. So much more to learn, but now I have enough experience to relax into it in a way that seemed impossible before. Now I can relax. Now I can flow.
The Canyon is alive. It never ceases growing. It's a land meant to fall apart. It never stops. But it never rushes, either. I guess it's comfortably mature, for its age.
