Grandeur

“Sometimes a place lives up to the hype,” Dad said as we boarded the shuttle bus at the Grand Canyon, “and sometimes it exceeds it.”

Rob had told us that no matter what picture we had in our heads for the grand Canyon, it was wrong. Before we left, he had us think about what we were expecting and told us that whatever it was that we were expecting, we were not expecting what we’d see. And so it was Monday, when we got off the train at the Grand Canyon depot and climbed the stairs to the rim. We looked over the vastness of the Canyon and the only thing I could think was that Rob was right.

There is no picture that can capture the vastness of this place, the subtlety of the changing light, the ribbons of color that stripe through it. Similarly, there are no words I can write here that will approximate, with vocabulary or metaphor, the scope and scale and splendor of it. Everything we take or draw or write is as insignificant as we ourselves are when faced with the age and beauty and sheer size of this place.

Still, there are moments to capture. There is the brilliance of the ranger talks and the way they were able to captivate Aidan (and the rest of us) with the story of the perhaps-reviving California Condor. There is the gregarious Aidan, maybe even more outgoing on his home soil, who puts his hand up for everything, asks questions (even of the ranger, even in a big crowd) constantly, who was such a presence in the Condor presentation that a woman in front of me turned at one point and said, “I wonder what he’s like to live with!”

There is Tuesday night, Naomi’s head in my lap as we lay down on a plateau of rock to hear the second ranger talk—on the night sky—and Naomi finally got what a light year is in the vastness and insignificance of our lives, our canyon, our financial crisis, our global warming in a universe where we are not even a grain of sand. I lay on my back and felt tears slip down my face, having these people I love with all of my being within an arm’s reach, having people I love scattered around the planet, and also knowing that all my love—and all the love of all the mothers and daughters all throughout the earth—is a minuscule force in the enormity of the galaxy, of the universe.

And, more than anything, there is the hike we took down the Kaibab trail. 1.5 miles down steep and (it seemed to me) almost unbearably dangerous terrain, the canyon dropping off thousands of feet on at least one (and sometimes two) sides. Down down, 1000 feet over the 1.5 miles, the white limestone dust turning to pink to red as we moved through layers of time in the rock beside us. I have no words for what it means to have every moment filled with the cloudless lapis sky, the vast beauty that actually makes me ache, the constant thrum of terror that Aidan would slip in the loose rocks and tumble over the edge.

Then, at the resting place where we would turn around, a plateau jutting out over oblivion, we walked out over boulders to a point, where we came across yet another Kiwi in the small but constant stream of them here in this park. Those of us from this little green island, visiting here in this vast red chasm, find one another by necklace or hat inscription or bag embroidery. We chat about what it is to be in the desert, in the US, what it is for us to see beauty that is on the New Zealand scale but as foreign from New Zealand beauty as Vega, 25 light years away.

I sat on this plateau with Dad and Jamie—who live half a world away from me now—and thought about family and friends and what it means to be an American, what it means to be a New Zealander, and what it means to be neither, like me. The Grand Canyon makes a person feel good about being from the US; this week is not a proud time to be from the US. I have been pleased to be recognized and claimed by New Zealanders; I am clearly not a New Zealander myself. There is no shortage of material for identity crises.

First, though, there was the potential for so many other kinds of crises. All of the signs around the Canyon rim, adorned with pictures and stories of people who have died walking these paths, remind us that what goes down must come up. This is, of course, the other thing to be anxious about when you take your 11- and 7–year old kids 1000 feet down into the Canyon. We finished our lunch (the most delicious cheese—or ham and cheese, depending on your preference—sandwiches that have ever been made) and turned to climb back up up up to the rim. Aidan, 17 seconds into the return journey, wanted to sit down. His legs wouldn’t do this, he told me. Could I please carry him?

The figures of Naomi, Jamie, and my father disappeared up the trail as I felt the combination of annoyance, frustration, and panic. What do I do with a kid who won’t climb the two hours straight up? How do I prevent my anger from welling up and over us both? I breathed in and out and tried to be cheerfully insistent, telling Aidan of course he was a strong boy, think how proud he would be when it was finished. And so Michael and I formed a cheering squad, and Aidan found his legs with less than three minutes of misery. He hiked up up up, stopping when we got to shade for a drink of water and a handful of trail mix before getting on to his little strong legs and climbing again.

With Aidan underway and safely headed up hill in front of me (why is it that uphill feels so much less dangerous than downhill), I could look around more easily and admire the view in a different way. For most of the climb, one side of us was rock climbing up in layers that changed shape and texture and color, the solidification of time. The other side of us was a cliff that opened onto vistas so immense as to be unimaginable, unphotographable, walls carved by a river so far below us that we would only catch a glimpse of it once. As Aidan trudged, I gaped and felt small and brief, a pinprick of a creature, a fruitfly, an ant. Each turn brought us a different view, each view spectacular, each moment like a jewel. Aidan developed a coping mantra and would murmur to himself about how great it would be at the top of the climb, how wonderful ice cream would taste, how lovely it would be to stop. I didn’t want to discourage anything he was dong to make himself happy, but I also wanted him to not wish this beautiful climb away. “Be here now,” I told him. “Breathe in and out in the difficulty of it, be inside the view. Remember that this is your day to be here with Papa and Jamie and Naomi and Daddy and me. This is your time at the Grand Canyon. This is your achievement.” And I tried to follow the advice I was giving to him, tried to be in the pounding of my heart, the aching of my thighs, the sweat trickling down the small of my back. I can’t remember a time I was happier to be alive.

Finally we reached the final set of switchbacks that would bring us up up a cliff face and to the trailhead. Aidan, smiling, noticed that he didn’t have to conserve his energy anymore, and that he could feel the fitness coming into his legs and making him stronger than he had ever been before. Naomi had powered her way to the top ahead of us (by eleven minutes, she told us when we got there) and Jamie had stopped to wait for Dad and Michael. I told Aidan he would be the second one in our party to finish the hike and he said, “No Mom, we’ll be second together,” and held out his hand. And so we sat in the shade at the top, me bursting with pride over the two children—years younger than any other walker on this trail—who had made this hard hike with (almost) no complaint. Soon the rest of the family joined us, and we sat joyfully together sharing the last of the water. Some moments can’t be improved.

Now we are on a flight from west coast to east. We have left behind the open trails of the Canyon and will head into city streets. Behind us, too, are the open spaces of the few holiday days of this trip, and ahead of us are over-committed, over-scheduled days with not a lot of fun in sight. Anyone would be awestruck at the Grand Canyon. I’ll see whether I can see the grandeur in the everyday life of suburbs and traffic and workshop days to pay off the tickets. I’ll try to breathe and be in the moment and feel the connection and insignificance and brilliance of each moment. We’ll see how the Grand Canyon travels in a carry-on bag.