Canyons

4/3/10 – 4/11/10

It seems like forever since I left Tucson.  Yet it was   only week ago that I was hiking up Wasson Peak in Saguaro National Monument enjoying the profusion of California poppies blanketing the hillside.

After my trek up Wasson Peak, I joined Tina and her grandson Pancho for a walk around the Desert Museum. Pancho is a sweet, kind and inquisitive six year old. We had a great  time watching hummingbirds, snakes, bugs, bobcats, and mountain lions.  His joy in observing the animals was contagious. Thanks Pancho. That evening Tina cooked a wonderful meal. The next day I had to make an unanticipated trip back to Santa Fe to take care of some business.

 I made the best of my back track. A hike in the mountains and a soak at Ten Thousand Waves soothed the miles of travel.  The most amusing part of my journey home came when filling up my gas tank at a station along I25.   An Iowa farmer at the next pump sized up my Honda Fit and said, “I bet you get good gas mileage.” Yes, I do. And then without missing a beat he asked, “You a New Mexico kid?” I smiled wide and replied without missing a beat, “Yes.”  I guess he did not hear  “Bruce Sprinsteen” blaring from the satellite radio when I pulled up. New Mexico kid?  "Kid"?  Heck no, I am a “Jersey Girl”!!!

I have since submersed myself in canyons,  Canyon de Chelly and the Grand Canyon to be specific. Canyon de Chelly National Monument is located on the Navajo nation in northwest Arizona. It is a fairly unique Park Service unit in that some Navajo families still reside in the canyon grazing their sheep. In addition to Navajo culture, ancestral Pueblo people once made their homes in the cliffs and farmed the canyon bottom. The presence and history of native culture in a stunning landscape is what Canyon de Chelly is all about. On my walk to White House Ruins (Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings) I met a young Navajo artist who painted images on pieces of local sandstone. He told me his grandmother still lives in the canyon and runs a Tracking School. He told me people from all over, he specifically mentioned New York, sign up to attend classes and walk barefoot in the sandy washes throughout canyon bottom tracking animals. I asked if he had had learned this skill from his grandmother. He replied, “No, I don’t want to get thorns stuck in my feet.”  I suppose that pleasure is reserved for New Yorkers. I am glad I come from the other side of the river….

I met many other interesting people while exploring. Most notable was Gilbert Jumbo, a local Navajo man, who invited himself into my campsite to take pictures of trees. Gilbert is a painter who attended art school in Santa Fe. He uses the pictures he takes at the canyon for inspiration for his work. I was not sure what was different about "my trees" compared to all the other cottonwoods in the campground but my trees led Gilbert to me. We spoke for quite some time. Gilbert told me that he taught at a private school in Maryland for six months. I asked how he liked that? He replied, “The food is so different out there.” “They eat so much sea food.”  He had a relative send him out some green chili stew and fry bread mix. Who could blame him?

After explorations and contemplations in Canyon de Chelly I made my way west through the Navajo and Hopi Reservations to the Grand Canyon. Like Canyon De Chelly the Grand Canyon also has a rich cultural history. But the experience of place is vastly different.  The Grand Canyon draws you seductively to her edge and beckons you to look at her beauty and when you do, something happens. For a moment you feel strange and then you realize you are looking into the soul of all humanity, all that ever was and all that will ever be. You try to grasp what is happening. You can’t. You take a photograph and exclaim of beauty and then you step back forever changed. That my friend, is the Grand Canyon.

I have spent the past several days hiking in the Canyon. Today I saw California Condors flying above the rim as I began my hike on the Bright Angel. Three condors soaring on the thermals with ease. Magnificent. If only I could hike the depths of this canyon with such ease. The people most graced with ease while hiking in the Grand Canyon were the children. They have no preconceived notion of what the hike will be like. They are not worried about whether it will be too steep, too long, too difficult or too anything that removes them from the present. Nor are the children trying to prove anything. The kids, alert to their surroundings, are experiencing the joy in nature.

While walking up the trail I passed a father holding his young son’s hand, slowly leading him up the switchbacks. God bless the father for his patience, and cheers to the boy who did not complain about  the steepness or heat. Ahead on the trail I came upon the boy’s older sister who was maybe seven. She was waving a stick in her hand like a magic wand commanding all the rock to turn to candy.  Rock candy, how marvelous, enough to satisfy the biggest sweet tooth!  And marvel I did at all the sweetness around me exhibited in the song of a bird, the wisp of a cloud, the color of stone, and in the delight of hikers. This is place of old stone, a deep gash into the heart of earth, immense in size, the envy of every artist’s palette,  it is a place for all humanity to open their hearts to the wonder of all that is, while experiencing all the grace that there could ever be.  It is a grand canyon.