Because It’s Magic

It’s pretty grand.

It’s a place where you are forced to use superlatives to describe it. Deepest, biggest, most openest…

Mostly though, it holds secrets. It tricks you into changing. It’s a sleight-of-hand trick on your brain performed by mother nature. You aren’t quite sure what she has done, you just know that she has done it. And like all sleight-of hand artists, she uses distractions, almost countless distractions, to ensure that you can’t focus on what is happening.

Depth

She starts with walls. Big walls. Steep canyon walls. From Lee’s Ferry, the walls begin to reach for the heavens as you start your float into Marble Canyon. The most notable thing about the walls in Marble Canyon are the colors. Deep, rich colors that change through the day. Yellows and reds that intermingle and dance off the walls. You can’t help but stare, jaw slightly open, in complete awe at the walls.

Even within her distractions, she is tricky. The walls keep you from noticing that you are moving as you are pulled deeper into the canyon. The pull of the river maintains your motion and you don’t think about it but you are being plunged into her depths. The walls block walls. On occasion, she gives a glimpse of where she has taken you and you see walls upon walls upon walls and realize that you can no longer see the top. There is no way out. You must embrace the depth.

Power

It may seem obvious, but the Colorado is a fucking powerful river. It carved a giant canyon, duh. But you can’t fully understand that power until you are on it. Until that very power is what propels you forward or stops you dead in your tracks or pulls you back upriver seemingly defying gravity. It’s a force that quickly earns your respect or kills you.

But that power only manifests itself when it wants to.

You see glimpses of it. The white on top of the water is its manifestation. You can feel it as it pulls you, but it also lays almost dormant for long stretches. Flat, green, almost soft and delicate in nature. And then you hear it. The roar. You can see the water hopping, popping on the horizon and the river is suddenly violence in action. It’s destructive. No longer inviting, it’s Clockwork Orange violence. You are overcome by waves as you crash through them riding currents coming from what seems like all directions.

And then it’s calm again. You feel a certain serenity and you know something has happened, but you aren’t sure because you were too focused on the power.

Color

Sensory overload. She draws you in with her beauty, but there is so much of it that you can’t focus on one thing at a time. The river is flat, glowing with the reflection of the canyon walls. The rock has light beaming from its surface creating colors that still haven’t been named. All juxtaposed with a sky that seemingly never quits.

It’s a combination that left me overwhelmed sitting in my chair on the beach unable to comprehend what had happened almost every night.

And then, just as I was at the cusp of unraveling the mystery, the darkness would fall. The stars would emerge. One shooting from canyon wall to canyon wall streaking the sky with the brightness of day. I’d give up and go to bed only to have my eyes pop open sometime between 2 and 3 every night and be completely saturated in the star show happening above me.

The only repreive from the sensory overload was sleep.

Width

At Lee’s Ferry, everything is a bustle. There are cars. Lots of motorized things happening. Tourists sauntering about getting their taste of the canyon. Things feel small, close. As you start your trip, the canyon walls engulf you and you can’t see out. You can’t see that you are being dragged into this space. A space that many call empty, that holds mystique because of that emptiness. It’s a giant corridor of land that is still difficult to access.

The canyon gives you a feeling of being in a wide-open space despite not being able to see past the walls engulfing you. It’s not until you make the effort to climb above some of the layers that the breadth of the place becomes evident.

Having climbed 2000ish feet above the canyon floor, I walked to the edge of the Tabernacle. The wind was ripping, a reminder of the power of the place. I was treated to a 360 degree view of my surroundings, the place I had been traveling through for the past several days. There were ridges that were on top of ridges. Mesas surrounded the ridges and it went on for what appeared to be forever in every direction. Engulfed in its depths, the width of the canyon was hidden.

I was alone at the top for only a few seconds. The view made me chuckle (that’s the non-phrasal verb for laughed out loud) overcome by the vastness of my surroundings. I walked out to the very edge. For a moment, I felt like dropping to my knees and thanking mother nature for this, but instead, I pulled out my camera and captured the above video.

I couldn’t help but feel that I had been tricked into getting to this place, that there were things I had learned but still didn’t know. All I could do was be grateful for the opportunity and bow out descending back into her depths

Now a month later, I am left unpackaging the intensity of the Grand, attempting to understand what it was that she had done to me. Like all good magicians, she won’t give up her secrets easily, but I’ll certainly be back for another show.

P. L. and R.