the grand canyon

We didn’t lose anyone at the Grand Canyon.

Every time I told somebody that this summer I was driving across the country with my daughter and her two oldest boys (six and four), and that our first stop was the Grand Canyon, I was warned to hold onto them tightly.  You would think that children must fall into the Grand Canyon with regularity from the number of warnings I received.  But forewarned we held on tightly, and didn’t lose even one.

After all, this isn’t my first rodeo.  In 1961 my grandmother took me on a 21-day Greyhound bus tour of the west and one of our stops was the Grand Canyon.  Obviously, I survived.  And in 1993 I drove from California to Michigan and back with my eight-year-old son.  Our last stop on our return was the Grand Canyon.  If I was going to lose a child, it would have been my daredevil, Court.  But he’s still with us.

I’ve eaten Christmas Dinner at the Canyon with my mother-in-law, and I think I was pretty pouty about not having Christmas dinner at home.  What a brat!  I’m surprised that she didn’t drop me into the Canyon.  

I made a day trip to the Canyon with my mother a few years before she died…. She wanted to see it one more time.  (Curious, because she was blind.)  We took the old steam train from Williams, Arizona and back.  And I didn’t lose her either.

Honestly, until this week I’ve never been impressed with the Grand Canyon.  It’s one of the most visited of our country’s National Parks, yet to me it always looked a bit flat, like a postcard or a fake backdrop.  But this Monday we arrived in time to see it on a beautiful, crystalline evening, as the sun was about to set.  And in the morning, we saw it again just after sunrise. On a post-holiday weekend in a post-pandemic summer, it was quiet and almost mystical.  

To see it through the eyes of my precious grandsons made me think of my own grandmother, and what a joy it must have been for her to share the experience with me.  Grandchildren make every experience richer.

From somewhere on the road,
Liz

Photos from left to right are:  me in 1961, my grandsons Warren and Campbell Barnes just yesterday, and my son Court in 1993.