The Grand Canyon
of the Colorado Plateau was like no other place on Earth. Nothing
prepared you for it. Not the typical boring, hours long drive from
anywhere to get there. Not the typical looking parking lot filled
with typical looking vehicles. Not the short paved stroll to the
edge. And then you were suddenly standing on the precipice and the
sun was just flickering to life and illuminating the rim miles on the
other side. And the shadows below began to stir and rims and ridges
after rims and ridges and peaks and spires began the emerge from the
shadows-- thousands of them --and you realized you were staring down
at mountain peaks and the bottom, if there was a bottom, was still as
black as ink and your mind--
Revolted.
Your whole sense of perception was blown to bits. The scale was
unfathomable. At first. The human mind, however, was a remarkable
organ. It could seemingly cope with anything. As you stood there, it
slowly adjusted. Reluctantly it began to accept this new sense of
scale, this new world order, and your heartbeat slowly returned to
normal, your mouth re moistened, your stomach leveled out and your
inner ears rebalanced. For most people, this was the Grand Canyon
experience. A momentary sense of wonder and disorientation followed
by ohhs and aahs and a lot of photo taking.
A few, however, never completely made that adjustment. To stare
into the abyss was to be swallowed by it. Standing there on the rim
of forever, you knew you could never step away.
* * *
I leaned into the pack, tugging and tabbing the pack straps trying to
get comfortable under the fifty pound load while descending the rocky
staircase of the trail. The first mile of any backpack was a
break-in period. In addition to the physical adjustments of belts and
straps and holsters and laces, the most important adjustment was
mental. A mile into it and the muscles were already protesting, and
the mind had to deal with the brutal realization that it has just
committed to this toil and burden for the next several days. This was
even more true in the canyon where the severity of the trail slope
began abruptly and didn't waver for many hours. Still, for all the
initial uncomfortableness, it was exhilarating too. All the planning
was done and I was walking. I was walking away. I was set in motion.
I was free. The joy bubbled up from inside of me and, combined with
the scenic splendor laid out below me, it was as close to a drug free
euphoria as I had ever had.
I stopped a half mile down the trail just to soak it all in. The
Grand Fucking Canyon. The Big Ditch. The Grand Abyss. The canyon was
over 277 miles long, 18 miles wide in places and over a mile deep.
Over two billion years of geological history laid exposed before me.
This early in the morning, the light in the canyon changed swiftly
and revealed a new stunning light show every few minutes. As tempting
as it was to keep my eyes on my footing on the steep trail, to do so
would be to miss the greatest show on earth. To hike the canyon was
the greatest adventure a backpacker could attempt.
Even better, doing
it with people you love. I glanced again and saw my 17 year old son
already a switchback ahead and below me. Head down, he was attacking
the trail in an insouciant teenage hunch that was a combination of
apathy and rage. It had taken some arm twisting to get him to ditch
his phone and PC to come on this trip, but if there was a cure,
however temporary, for the teenage fury, a week's worth of toil in
the most beautiful on earth should do the trick.
“You're right. This going to be special,” my brother said as if
reading my thoughts. He caught up, a little out of breath but
clicking away on a point-and-shoot digital camera. He was a tall
skinny man with natural athleticism. He worked an office job in San
Diego, though, and I was more than a little curious to see how his
club conditioning translated to the harsh realities of the canyon.
All the Stairmaster reps in the world wasn't going to replicate what
we were about to do.
“Look at this fucking view!”
“You ain't see nothing yet,” I told him. “This is just the warm
up.”
“Physically or scenically?”
“Both,” I laughed.
His wife Connie walked up with a smile. She looked comically small
and girlish under her big backpack. It was good to see her smiling
under that load. Nothing could ruin a trip faster than an unhappy
female. Hell, let's not be sexist, I thought to myself. I'd
seen the canyon reduce professional athletes to tears. It was a big
commitment for a 40-year-old substitute school teacher to make and I
admired her for it even if I was a little nervous for her.
“It is so beautiful,” she said. “You don't really know, do you?
Until you're in it. You can stand on the edge and look down, but it's
all kind of one dimensional until you're really in it.”
Maybe I was just a little less nervous about her after that
thoughtful insight.
Finally my own wife, Donna, caught up to us. She was walking slow,
conserving her energy. Our eyes met and she gave a nod and a wry
smile. She had gone back and forth about doing this trip. She'd been
on enough of my backpacking adventures to know what was in store for
her and hadn't entered into it lightly. She knew, in advance, of all
the tough trail miles in front of her and the sore muscles and sweat
and cramps. I hadn't pushed her but let her know what a special
opportunity this would be. Basically our whole family, together on
one last grand adventure.
“You know, Disneyland can be a grand adventure too,” she'd told
me. “And they have nice hotels.”
In the end, she cautiously agreed to go with the unspoken
understanding that I owed her a nice adventure with four star hotels
and restaurants.
“Everybody ready?” I asked. “A half mile down, seven to go.”
It was seven and a half miles to
Hermit Camp our destination for the night. It was not an ambitious
mileage by any means. But mileage in the canyon was misleading. For
causal hikers with backpacks seven plus miles was nothing to sneeze
at. The steepness of the trail kept constant pressure on your legs.
Knees and ankles were especially vulnerable. People were always
underestimating the canyon including the first European ever to set
eyes upon it. In 1540, a captain
of Coronado,
Garcia
Lopez de
Cardenas,
stumbled upon the rim in search of Cibola. Spying water at
the bottom, he sent a couple men down to fetch it. Three days later
they returned empty-handed confessing that they’d only made it a
third of the way down.
Thanks to advance scouting and trail-building, we'd get their by
early afternoon, but we'd feel it too.
The trail continued to descend steeply through the first rock strata,
Coconino Sandstone a buff colored rock. By the time we hit our first
trail junction at 1.3 miles everyone was ready for a break—even Ben
whom I was happy to see followed our rule of the trail—stop at any
trail junction and wait for the rest of the party to catch up.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“It's okay,” he said with a teen-aged shrug.
I shook my head. It was some hard-core apathy that let you be unmoved
by the Grand Canyon. Of course, Ben had always been that way to a
certain extent. For years I had dragged him around the southwest,
more or less against his will, bribing him in various ways,
attempting to impart my own love of the desert and canyons to him. It
had always seemed like an uphill struggle. He'd been more interested
in the gift shop at the end of the trail as a child and a
cheeseburger and shake as pre-teen. I continued to take him for years
after I knew he didn't like it, figuring he'd appreciate it someday,
but lately, I'd stopped asking him. It just didn't seem worth the
effort—and if anything it was driving us apart more than bringing
us together. He was a hard kid to connect with and I'd more or less
promised him this was the last hike he'd have to do with us.
Of course, some part of me had been hoping that the Grand Canyon
would blow his mind and ignite the same passion in him that it did in
me when I first saw it. Looking at him sullenly chewing on his trail
mix that morning, however, it no longer seemed likely.
The rest of the party, however, was
still in a festive mood. It was a beautiful spring day and the
jackets we had started out with on the rim had already been shed. If
it was this warm already at this elevation, I knew it was going to be
downright hot by this afternoon. That could be a big problem in the
canyon where shade and water was scarce. Big problem. Right then,
however, I wasn't going to worry about it. I was just going to sit on
rock, eat cheese and crackers and enjoy the company in a spectacular
setting.
Soon it was time to “head 'em up and move 'em out” and we left
our comfortable little junction and began to descend through the red
sandstone Supai layer of the canyon. Huge boulders loomed above us as
we switch-backed down into a canyon within a canyon. Soon the trail
“leveled out” and followed a natural ledge. At Santa Maria
Springhouse we all stopped and took another break. Legs were already
getting a little shaky but everyone was still in high spirits. Joking
about the weight they were carrying and odd assortments of trail mix.
“Lets' hit Lookout Point for lunch,” I suggested. I was anxious
to keep peeling off the miles while everyone was still fresh and in
good spirits. I knew it wouldn't last. At some point for everyone,
backpacking became work. Grueling, tedious labor. How everybody
reacted when that happened was going to depend on the individual and
was going the key to the trip. If we could make the miles when it was
no longer fun, we'd be all right. If not, we could end the trip as
mortal enemies. All it took was one weak link that externalized their
suffering and made everybody missing.
I didn't have long to have my first possible candidate. Soon after
the spring stop, Connie started falling behind. Bruce, her husband
continued down the trail, head down, followed closely by my wife, but
Connie was stopping a lot. Fiddling with her boots. I waited on a
rock for her.
“You having problems with your feet?' I was ready to give her my
take care of your feet speech followed by a toe inspection. I had a
complete blister kit ready including old-fashioned moleskin and
new-fangled Second Skin but she shook me off.
“Everything hurts,” she muttered. “My feet, my shoulders, my
hips.”
“We should stop and check out your feet. Do you have hot spots? We
don't want to wait until blisters develop.”
“Just keep going,”she snapped.
I hesitated a moment knowing I should head this off before it became
a thing, but it was too early in the trip for a full flown
confrontation. For now, I decided it was best to give her the benefit
of the doubt and monitor the situation going forward.
“Let's do it,” I said in what I hoped was an encouraging manner.
I followed her for a while until she got a annoyed and stopped and
stood aside with her arms crossed.
We walked. Down, down, down. Step after step. Hour after hour. Forget
mileage in the canyon. Miles are meaningless. Just make it to the
next ledge, the next overlook. It was after eleven when we make it to
Lookout Point and the designated lunch spot. Bruce, Ben and my wife
were already there sprawled out upon the rock. I walked up a ways
ahead of Connie and looked out over the the unbelievable panoramic
view. Behind us in a 180 degree arc, the canyon loomed above us in
sheer walls. Ahead of us in a 180 degree arc, the rest of the canyon
lay sprawled out below us. The river itself was still hidden within
the inner gorge. Rows after rows of ridges and canyons still lay
between us and our designation. We'd been hiking for hours and the
canyon seemed to be getting bigger.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow,” my brother muttered. “We're not even halfway
there.”
“Yeah, we're halfway, at least,” I said.
Nobody seemed encouraged by that fact.. Bruce soon fell asleep on his
back with his arms folded over his chest and a sandwich half-eaten on
his breastbone. Connie shuffled into the group and walked on by. I
thought she was going to continue on down the trail, but she just
went a little farther down, found a rock with a little shade and sat
down without a word to anyone. My family sat close and ate silently.
“How are you guys doing?”
“Fine. Whatever,” my son said.
My wife gave me another wan smile. “It might not be the ideal
vacation you've built it up to be.”
I shrugged her off. “The first day is always the hardest. Once the
shock wears off, the body adapts.”
“Adapts to hammock,” Ben quipped, his eyes still closed.
“And a large bottle of wine,” added my wife.
At least I knew they were going to be okay.
We took a long lunch break, too long, but eventually we were on the
trail again.The afternoon hike was grueling. The trail wrapped around
another huge side drainage and eventually ended up at another
panoramic point that no one but myself enjoyed. From there we
descended through the Redwall—the highest and toughest rock strata
in the canyon and the largest obstruction for any route from rim to
river. On the Hermit Trail, the Redwall was breached by a series of
switchbacks called the Cathedral Stairs. It was actually one of the
easier routes through that strata of any in the canyon, but still it
was hard work. We were still descending. The altitude was getting
lower and afternoon getting warmer and warmer. We took one last break
together at the foot of the stairs and Bruce didn't even bother
taking off his pack. “It's staying on til I reach camp,” he said
defiantly. Connie took a little nap with her head in his lap. The
last couple miles were fairly level as the trail finally reached the
Tonto platform, but they were the longest two miles of all.
By the time we stumbled down the last couple switchbacks to the camp
along Hermit Creek, we were all tired. The problem with backpacking,
however, was that the end of the trail was not the end of work. We
all had tents to pitch, bed rolls to lay out, water to pump and
filter, stoves to set up and dinner to prepare. Ben didn't even
bother erecting his shelter-- just rolled down his bedroll under a
shady tree and took a nap. Bruce pitched he and Connie's tent—and
after filtering and drinking a couple bottles of water-- disappeared
into it, as it turned out, for the night. The ladies and I made a
simple meal of mac and cheese with smoked sausage. The smell of food
revived my son who joined us. By the time supper dishes were scraped
clean with sand and rinsed in the creek, the sun had long set below
the rim and the long canyon twilight was upon us.
We had the camp all to ourselves and we sat down by the edge of the
creek and passed around a flask of wine. I've always felt an evening
in camp after an arduous day was as close to a state of grace as I
was ever going to achieve. Physically exhausted, emotionally relaxed,
I just kind of sat there and let the sunset colors wash over me. Let
the silence soak in. Watch the heavens open up. It felt so good just
to sit there with nothing to do that hours passed as if in a moment.
We talked about silly stuff (corny TV shows, goofy relatives) and
giggled continuously over Bruce's distant snoring and nothing at all.
Even my sullen teenage son was laughing and chatting happily. It felt
right.
I felt right for the first time in a long time.
The following day was as idyllic as the previous day torturous. We
awoke fresh and surprisingly spry. The dawn's light began to
illuminate the soaring cathedral all around us. Below the little
creek babbled playfully to itself and we had to pinch ourselves to
believe it was all real.
The plan was to camp there for two nights and explore the immediate
environs. While the other lazybones spent an extended morning making
an elaborate breakfast, Donna and I hiked up the creek. It was
delightful. It was a park-like botanical garden filled with rock
sculpture, wildflowers and waterfalls. The creek flowed so smoothly
over the stone, it was like walking in a series of fountains. We
waded up the creek for a long ways just Adam and Eve in their own
private paradise. The lure of the canyon pulling us deeper. We wanted
to go on and on. Sampling the delights around each new bend, but we
didn't push it. We planned a hike down the opposite side of the
canyon for the afternoon, a descent to the Colorado River, so we
eventually, reluctantly turned back.
After lunch, the girls ended up staying around camp. Connie was
adamant about taking the day off. So the three guys hiked down to the
river. The descent down the lower part of Hermit Canyon was as
different as the upper as could be but no less enjoyable. While the
upper part of the canyon was a garden, the lower part was deep,
narrow and scoured bare. It was a geologist’s delight, however,
with walls of shiny mica and salt-sickles handing from the wall. And
a shower spring, which we stripped down and took advantage of. Then,
finally, we came to the river. It's hard to describe the feeling you
can receive from just a river. But the Colorado in the Grand Canyon
is anything but just a river.
At the Hermit Rapids, where we approached, the roar was so loud we
had to shout to be heard even though we were standing next to each
other. After miles of silence, the canyon was filled with the sound
and sight of water exploding over rocks. The sound
reverberated--bounced from wall to wall-- and seemed to amplify. As
we approached the edge, the temperature dropped a good 10 to 15
degrees. We fell silent in awe of the force and presence of the power
of raw nature that man, despite his leaps in technology, could never
master. The endless, infinite flow of water was hypnotic. Back, at
the top of the rim, it had seemed impossible to think a single river
could carve such a place. But there, standing next to it, it was
impossible not to believe.
There it was possible to believe in a lot of things that seemed
unlikely from a distance.
That evening, we all met back at camp and relocated happy hour a few
hundred yards up the creek, to a natural rock grotto with a cascading
waterfall. We passed around a pint bottle of Jim Beam and ate
crackers and trail mix until well after dark. It was just so
comfortable there, surrounded by family and the sound of water and
laughter, embraced by the little canyon within the canyon within the
Grand Canyon... Yet, all the while, I couldn't forget the awe of the
river. Its roar still vibrated in my bones. It was hard not to
witness that much raw power and not relate it to fury. But the river
wasn't fury. It was apathy. The remorseless, unceasing power of time
and the laws of decay... It was both inescapable and disquieting.
Back at camp that night, we giggled knowingly to ourselves as several
parties stumbled into camp well after dark in various states of
destruction. I heard one guy mutter to his fiend that he was a
marathon runner, but that was by far the hardest physical thing he'd
ever had to do. We went to bed that night pleased with ourselves and
ready for a big day tomorrow—pushing on deeper into the canyon.
When I finally snugged the sleeping bag closer that night, my wife by
side, and closed my eyes, however, I thought I could hear the river
roaring. The river was miles away, but it sung to me in my sleep and
I tossed like a tiny piece of flotsam in its teeth.
The next day our packs were lighter, though our heads heavier, after
having jettisoned most of our alcohol in two nights. It was just as
well. Alcohol was a transitioning lubricant and helped us ease from
civilization into a state of being more primitive and spiritually
deeper. Soon, we wouldn’t need it. We would literally be high off
the wild. Our sharpening senses and tightening focus would rival the
best drugs in their amazing effects. But first, I knew, we had to
walk off one last hangover. We were late breaking camp. I tried to
hide my annoyance, but I knew if we didn't get moving, we weren't
going to make the river again that night. It wasn't a big deal, but
when I had a plan, I liked to stick to it. Finally, though,
everybody's tents were packed up and packs rearranged and hefted onto
shoulders and we were ready to go.
The trail ascended out of the Hermit Creek drainage and snaked its
way across the Tonto platform. About two thirds of the way down from
the rim, the Tonto sat above the inner gorge like a large book shelf
that ran the length of the entire canyon. In the land of vertical,
the Tonto was a stripe of horizontal. Any travel by foot upstream or
downstream the canyon was probably going to be done on the Tonto
Platform. That said, the way wasn't straight and easy. While a
traverse on the Tonto was going to be fairly level (at least compared
with the mind-numbing elevation of the rest of the canyon), there was
still a lot of in and out. Numerous side canyons had to be wound
around, descended, ascended and negotiated. In addition, west of the
Hermit, the trail, such as it was, saw a distinct drop off in use.
Combined with criss-crossing game trails and watercourses, it was
going to take a bit of trail finding, scouting and guesswork to stay
on route.
I told Ben as much as we started out that morning.
“Stay close today, the route finding might get a bit tricky.”
“Whatever.” A shrug of the shoulders.
“I'm serious,” I told him. “You're the strongest hiker of the
group, but you don't have a lot of trail finding experience. We need
everybody together today.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. And he was off.
“And wait at every trail junction,” I said stupidly to the back
of his pack. Stupidly because, according to my map, the next trail
“junction” was a day's hike away.
Everybody has heard and used the phrase, 'off the beaten path,”
many times in their life, but few, I theorized, had actually,
literally, been there. We were now on a trail so seldom used that it
faded in and out of existence. At first it was a little nerve
wracking. Accustomed as we were to not thinking about our path in
life, the actual act of thinking about were to go next, was new and a
little scary. The path weaved in and out of the sandy terrain,
through rabbit grass and clumps of snakeweed, small Mormon tea and
prickly pear. There was nothing much above shin height--no shade at
all—but the views across the canyon were unobstructed and
spectacular.
Like all things in life, however, the mind adjusts quickly. The task
of staying on the trail became easier as we hiked and experienced it.
After a while I began to see the logic it was following and began to
anticipate where the trail as heading and were it was going next. I
began to relax and enjoy the easy walking and the incredible scenery.
Every once in while I could see a fresh boot print in the sand that
allowed me to feel confident that Ben was still ahead of us and on
the same trail.
Though the Tonto platform is a wide shelf, it varied and at certain
points constricted. We stopped for lunch at a point where the trail
pinched down to a point directly above the inner gorge. A few dicey
steps were required and then we were perched on a rock with a bird's
eye view of the mighty river hundreds of feet below. We stopped and
ate lunch while watched the miniscule kayaks run the rapids at Hermit
Creek. From our advantage point, they didn't seem quite real and the
huge waves we witnessed the day before were but ripples on a pond.
Ben was still, apparently, way ahead of us.
We took too long at lunch again, talking about nonsensical things
from our daily lives. We laughed easily. In this setting, mortgage
payments, doctor appointments and incompetent bosses seemed trivial
jokes—as if seen on some distant sit-com. As we snacked and
chatted, I started to catch my wife sneaking looks up the trail. I
too was feeling the need to push on, to not allow Ben to get too far
from us, to still, maybe, make it to the river that night.
Donna and I ended up packing up before Bruce and Connie and starting
down the trail on our own
.
“You worried a about Ben?” she asked at my shoulder.
“A little.”
“He knows the trail, right?
“There's only one trail,” I said.
“Then he'll be fine.”
“Sure,” I agreed, knowing both us of weren't fully committed to
the theory.
From the lunch spot, the canyon began a long, circuitous detour
around a deep side canyon. In fact, the rest of the afternoon would
be spent circumnavigating several such canyons. Our party started to
string out along the trail. I couldn’t help but quicken my pace,
while my wife fell back. Looking back across one of the canyons I saw
Bruce and Connie well behind. With Connie starting to fall behind
him. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem. It was a natural part of
hiking. You spent a lot of your time hiking alone, thinking your own
thoughts. It was usually an enjoyable experience. Increasingly,
however, I was becoming more anxious and the feeling that something
wasn't right only grew.
Every once in a while I'd see another boot print in the trail, then
it'd be gone. Every time I didn't see one for a while and begin to
think they were gone again, I'd see a another couple. At this point,
however, I didn't know if they were Ben's or not. Several times I
stopped and scanned the immediate vicinity, but there was really, no
other place he could go. Unless he fell off a cliff or dropped into
one of the side canyons, he had to be ahead of us. The latter theory
scared me a little. If he somehow mistook one of these side drainages
for Boucher Canyon—our route to the river, he could be in trouble.
Most of these minor canyons ended in precipitous drop-offs. Very few
of them had nontechnical routes to the river. It was possible that in
the jumble of boulders crossing the canyons, he'd lost the trail
and/or started down it. I still didn't think it was likely. Bruce and Connie were still
behind us—and they had a lot less outdoor experience than Ben. No,
the logical answer was that he was well ahead of still, flaunting his
youth, energy and distaste for authority.
Still I couldn't make the butterflies disappear. I'd be happy when
the day was over and we were finally all together again.
The canyon shadows were lengthening when I finally got to the rim and
the beginning of the descent in to Boucher Canyon itself. I told
myself to wait up for the rest of the party but I couldn't do it. I
raced ahead, almost jogging down the trail. If Ben was ahead of us
and following the family rule, he would wait for us where the Tonto
Trail met the Boucher Trail coming down the canyon. I was out of
breath and sweating when I made it to the intersection. A large cairn
of rocks marked the spot unmistakably and a small spring and large
campsite sat nearby. No one was there.
My insides dissolved.
I dropped the pack and, trying to keep the utter panic out of my
voice, began to shout.
“Ben!”
The name echoed back off the wall, distorted and scary sounding.
Still I shouted it. First up the canyon then down. I paced downed the
trail staring at sand. There were many tracks here. The trail down
the Boucher Canyon was more frequented than the traverse across the
Tonto. There was no way to tell if one of those tracks could have
been Ben's.
“Ben!”
Donna was the next to arrive at the clearing. Obliviously she'd heard
my shouting.
“He's not here.”
I shook my head. “No sign. No tracks. No arrows in the sand.
Nothing.”
“This isn't good.”
“No, it's not.”
She joined me in shouting his name. And whistling. She could do that
two-fingered air piercing whistle that I never could. We wandered up
and down the trail both ways aimlessly, shouting and whistling. But
all we got back was echoes.
“He must've gone on. Down to the river,” I said. “It's the only
explanation.”
“Yes, you're probably right,” my wife agreed, with a frown.
I walked over to my pack and started to hoist it up.
“What are you doing?”
“I'm going on down. We need to catch up to him.”
“Just hold on a sec. Let's wait for Bruce and Connie.”
I glanced up at the canyon walls. At the very top, the sun was still
shining. Down here however, the shadows were already beginning to
deepen. The trip down Boucher Canyon would be narrower and darker
still. I had a couple hours of twilight left, but...
“The clock is ticking,” I told her. “It'll be dark in a couple
hours.”
“Then we'll hike in the dark,” she said. “We go on now, we'll
just add to the confusion. We'll wait for Bruce and Connie. Come up
with plan and keep everybody else on the same page.”
Of course she was right. I was keyed up, though, and waiting was only
spurring the darkest parts of mind. I could feel the fluttery breath
of panic and I did not like the feeling. I fought to keep it under
control, once you let that particular genie out of the bottle , there
was no going back. Finally, after another twenty minutes, Bruce and
Connie, shuffled into the clearing.
“He's not here?” Connie asked. They'd heard us shouting from
above.
“No. No sign.”
“Damn,” said Bruce out of breath.
“He must've gone on to the river. I mean, I don't think he could be
behind us, do you?”
“Not that I could tell,” Bruce said doubtfully. ”Unless he got
off the trail somehow.”
“Or laid down in the shade in one of those side canyons and fell
asleep,” Connie added, not so helpfully.
Their doubt gnawed at the walls holding my panic in. And froze,
momentarily, my decision making skills. No, I told myself. The
easiest answer was the simplest answer.
“I still think he's ahead of us. I'm going on down. There is just
enough light to make it to the river tonight.”
“Okay,” Bruce said. “But I think Connie and I will stay here
tonight. That way if he is behind us. He'll catch up with us here.
We'll stay here until noon tomorrow, then we'll come down to the
river to meet you.”
“Where all three of you will be waiting for us,” Connie said
optimistically.
“Hon?” I asked asked turning to my wife.
”I'm going with you,” she said. And that was it. The decision was
made. We quickly hoisted into the packs, all sense of fatigue gone
for the moment and buckled up the belts and straps.
“Noon, tomorrow,” I confirmed.
“Noon tomorrow,” Bruce agreed. “Good luck.”
Donna and I started down the canyon. There was little semblance of
trail. It was just a matter of walking down the mostly dry creek bed.
The little creek came and went, sometimes disappearing under the
gravel bed of the canyon only to reappear when it became solid rock.
We walked fast. I was upset and the emotion translated as effort.
Donna mostly kept up. The canyon grew narrower and darker but we
never paused, never stopped for a break. By the time we made it to
the bottom we had both switched on our headlamps.
We heard the river a long time before we could see it. Even up the
canyon, the roar echoed like some gargantuan snoring, snarling
beast. It was an odd feeling as that sound engulfed us in the gloom
and we couldn't see anything. We finally dragged ourselves across a
long white beach, visible in the darkness, and there was the river--a
huge moving mass of darkness, only the white caps and waves visible
in the dim reflected starlight in the canyon. There was nothing else
there. The white beach. The dark walls of the inner canyon. The sky
just starting to dot with stars and the dark water.
Shouting and whistling this time was mostly pointless. Our shouts
were barely audible above the roar of the river. She shone our
headlamps around the beach. I walked downstream as far as I could.
Donna walked upstream, but there was no other human light down there.
There was no other humans. By the time we met back, it was pitch
black and our moods were even darker.
“Where the fuck can he be?”
“I don't know,” she replied, barely audible above the river. “I
don't like this.”
“Well, there's nothing more we can do tonight. Let's get the tent
pitched.”
Having something to do was a relief. We set about emptying our packs,
unpacking the tent, staked it out, clipped up the poles, unrolled the
air mattresses and the sleeping bags. When that was done, there was
water to filter. With extended commotion of the day, I suddenly
realized I was terribly thirsty and obviously dehydrated. I hadn't
been monitoring my fluid intake close enough now my body was
screaming for water. Neither of us felt like eating much more than a
handful of nuts, but we sat in the dark and sipped our powdered
Gatorade.
At first I was realized I was seething with anger. How could that kid
be so damn irresponsible? How could be be so careless and reckless?
How could he make us worry like this. But as I sat there in the dark,
anger turned to fatigue and fatigue to melancholy. I blamed myself. I
kicked myself for the whole rotten idea. Adventure, I thought
ruefully, was fun until it wasn't. The definition of adventure was an
endeavor whose outcome could not be certain. Well, I had had gotten
my wish. I was in an adventure now—and worst, I had subjected my
most precious loved ones to the winds of fate.
I shook my head. “It's all my fault,” I said aloud.
In the dark, Donna squeezed my leg. “It'll be alright. We'll find
him tomorrow,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Sure.”
“Promise?”
“Sure. Let's get some sleep though. It could be another long day.”
“Okay.”
She crawled into the little tent and wormed our way into the tight
fitting mummy bags, but I didn't sleep. Not a wink. I was at the
bottom of the Grand Canyon. The rocks I was sleeping above were over
2,000 million years old. And I felt he weight of time and earth
looming above me. My mind swirled through all the possible scenarios
involving my son. And as the cycle repeated throughout the night, the
possibilities became increasingly bizarre and horrible. Outside the
tent the river roared at me. The sound echoed off the canyon walls
and played tricks on my ears. Several times I thought I heard voices
and shouts. I'd start upright in the bag, my heart pounding,
straining to hear more. Then I'd hear something similar and realize
it was just the audio chaos of the great river.
Once I was so sure I heard something, I wriggled out of the bag,
unzipped the tent and scrambled outside. I stood there in the dark
for a long time, straining to hear. I called his name. But the shout
dissolved in the white noise. A single discordant note in a grand
symphony.
By the time morning came, I was a wreck. I crawled out of bed before
dawn and began circling the camp. The canyon bottom here was full of
sand and boulders and footprints. I walked around looking for
bootprints, messages in the sand, anything. In truth I don't know
what I was looking for. My body needed to do something and my mind
wanted to give orders. Slowly, somewhere outside of the canyon, the
sun began to rise and a warm glow enveloped the canyon and seemed to
emanate from the rocks themselves. It was beautiful and it struck me
that even in a life and death struggle, the mind could still
recognize and appreciate beauty.
By the time I returned to the tent, Donna was awake and making
coffee.
“Anything?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“I don't know what to do,” I admitted.
“I guess we just have to wait.”
“For the life of me I can't imagine what he's doing. Would he b
crazy enough to get on with a raft trip?”
She frowned and looked over her coffee at the rim. “Or if he was
mad enough, he could've slipped off the trail, waited for us to go by
and hiked back to the rim on his own.”
“I don't know how he could've been that mad. I didn't say anything
to him, besides stay close. The one thing I wanted him to do—and he
immediately didn't do it.”
“That's predictable.”
In fact, Ben had always been that way. Quick to take offense. Angry
for no reason. Bristled at authority of any kind. As a teenager, it
had gotten progressively worse. We had been pulling and pushing on
each other for some time now—to the point where our mere presence
angered each other. I'd been adamant about this hike. In my mind, it
would draw us back together, give some time away from social
distractions, where we'd be able to come together, talk things
through in a way we never could at home or in some “counseling”
session. As usual, when it came to parenting, I couldn't have been
more wrong.
“I am so sorry about all of this.”
“It's not your fault,” she said quietly in a way I knew she
didn't quite all the way believe it.
The waiting was excruciating. We were waiting for Bruce and Connie to
meet up with us and I wondered why the hell, we had agreed on noon?
And we didn't even firm up that time. Did it mean they were going to
leave that camp at noon. Or were they planning to be here, at the
river, at noon? Now that we knew Ben wasn't here, it was pointless to
stay here, but Donna said it was best to stick to the plan. I tried
to fish for a little while, but I so upset I couldn't tie my knots
and wound getting more angry and frustrated than before. Noon came
and went. I waited two more hours and there was still no sign of my
brother and his wife.
I was wound up tight. There was no way I could sit there and wait any
longer.
“I'm hiking up the canyon to meet them,” I told my wife. “I'm
sure they're on their way, but I can't wait here any longer.”
She nodded. “Do what you gotta do.”
I took a water bottle and a snack bar and headed up the canyon. There
was little point to it I knew, but I had to move. Do something.
Around every crook in the canyon, I expected to meet them coming
down, and when I didn't, my pace quickened. An hour of hiking went by
and still there was no sign of them. A feeling grew in the pit of my
stomach and my began to form a black thought. Something was not
right.
Another hour later, I was fairly jogging when I reached the trail
junction where we'd left my brother. Out of breath and panting, I
spun around in circles. The clearing was exactly as I remembered it,
but they weren't there. In fact, there was no sign of a camp anywhere
in the area. I walked up the trail a bit, then paced back. My heart
was still beating wildly from the exertion and not slowing down. What
in hell was going on? This made absolutely no sense. It was like
a dream, but even as I thought that, I knew it was all too real. My
sweat, my rasping breath, my heart palpitations... It was happening
and nothing in all my experience prepared me to deal with this.
Nowhere. Nothing. Nada.
How can you cope with the unexplainable? How can you deal with
something that can't happen?
Of course, that was the nature of loss I realized. It was never
anything you wanted to accept. One minute everything is fine. The
next minute, it's not. And though you'd like to kick and scream and
tear your hair out, the fact was there was nothing to do about it it.
Though you wish not to accept the reality of it, it is, none the
less, the new reality. And so your mind adapted, changed and went on.
Even if you don't want it to. Even is the reality is something so
empty and vast that you cannot possibly survive in it. Or want to.
But you do. You must. It was all you know. And you go on, adapting to
the new reality, until it feels real and then it happens again. And
you start all over. And you go on until...
A sudden thought crossed my mind. No, not crossed... Entered and
conquered my entire brain. Everyone else I'd let out of my sight
disappeared on me. Now, I'd left my wife down on the river bank. How
could I have been so foolish? A panic seized me unlike any other
emotion I'd ever experienced. I turned on my heel and began running
back down the canyon. I ran carelessly, mindlessly, legs flailing
arms flapping over the rock strewn canyon bottom. I tripped and fell
numerous times. I lost my backpack. Dropped my water bottle. Cut the
hell out of my legs and arms. I had to have ran the distance in
substantially less than the two hour walking time, but to me it was a
endless nightmare. The canyon walls canted crazily over me. The rocks
seemed to snap at my feet.
The bottom of the canyon was long in shadow when I finally stumbled
to the beach beside the Colorado River. And my worst fear was
realized. There was nobody there. No tent, no camp, no tracks, no
wife.
I may have screamed in anguish. I may have wept with horror. I
may have cursed the gods. I may have tried to reason with chaos but
ultimately it was all drowned out by the relentless unceasing roar of
the river. I sat down on the beach and stared at the brown river and
white waves. I sat there while the shadows of evening crept down the
wall. Until the black seeped into the canyon and filled it up with
night. I sat there staring at the river, a black fluid motion in a
black seamless night. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to
grasp. Just a void bigger than anything in this life.
* * *
Joe Reinbeck stood on the helipad as the last chopper of the day
settled down on the X of earth at incident command. As Branch Chief
of Emergency Services for the National Park Service, Reinbeck was in
charge of search and rescue operations in the canyon. Though he gave
day to day operations to rangers actually in the field, he had become
personally involved in this search. Though the Grand Canyon led the
national park system in rescue operations—more than 300 “incidents”
per year, there were always a few that caught in his craw. Ones, that
for whatever reason, he took personally. This missing hiker search
hadn't made the national headlines that some recent ones, but still
it had resonated to him.
He guessed it was maybe the age of the hiker, the same age as
himself. 49 was old enough to be past his prime, but still more than
capable of athletic endeavor. In fact, that age was the least
frequent for rescue incidents. The young were foolish and the old
were frail, but middle-age men had both vigor and sense. It wasn't
often they got into trouble in the canyon.
The searchers began to wander toward him, automatically assembling
for the day's last briefing. He guessed they saw the handwriting on
the wall. After seven days of fruitless searching, without a sign of
the party, they knew that time, money and resources were running out.
He saw it in their faces. The frustrated resignation. As a SAR guy
himself, he knew the only thing more disjointing than a body recovery
was not finding anything. He was sure they felt like they had failed,
though often they were dealt a losing hand from the bottom of the
deck.
The more personal information about the hiker that trickled in, the
more he was convinced it was a bad hand—all the way around. There
was no way, even though, he sympathized with the party, that he could
continue to allocate resources to the search.
“Listen up!” he called above the dying rotors of the helicopter.
“This will be the last briefing. The search is officially being
terminated effective immediately.”
The searchers murmured to themselves. Several looked at the ground
and shook their heads
“As you all know, the search was initiated when the party's
employer contacted us that he hadn't returned to work after intending
to backpack into the canyon. A check of permits indicated the party
had in fact received a permit. And though it listed four additional
people on the permit it was established through eye-witnesses that
the party was hiking alone. His vehicle was found at the appropriate
trailhead, so it is reasonable to assume, and again we have some eye
witnesses accounts, that the party did enter the canyon. He was last
seen at Hermit Camp on the night of the 7th and was
presumed to be heading to Boucher Canyon via the Tonto route.
“I think we can all agree we have searched this grid thoroughly.”
Several of the volunteers nodded tiredly.
“Recent information suggests that the party was probably severely
depressed. I have personally conducted interviews with co-workers and
a distant out-of-state relative. The subject had suffered several
close personal losses in the past 18 months. First his teenage son
over-dosed on drugs. Six months later his brother and his wife were
killed in a car accident. And a couple months ago his wife passed
away from cancer.”
More murmuring from the SAR teams.
“I think we can all agree that suicide by canyon takes many forms.”
Lord knows, they'd all seen it before. The troubled twenty year old.
The bi-polar depressive. They came from all over the world to stand
on the brink and gaze into the abyss. Most, however, simply stepped
off the edge of the rim. Very few took the effort to hike all the way
down to very bottom.
“It is assumed that the party took his own life, most likely by
drowning in the river. We will probably never know. In any case, the
national park service and myself thank you for your tireless efforts.
Now go home drink a cold beer and take a long, cool shower for
chrissakes.”
The searchers broke up—many heading straight to lodge for a cold
one—cool shower be damned. He pitied the poor unsuspecting tourists
when those sweat and dust encrusted hikers entered the bar. In a few
minutes he'd join them and buy a round. Right then, however, he
walked alone to the rim. What one of us, he pondered, has not
suffered a monumental loss? What one of us would give anything, our
soul, our sanity, our life, to have them once again? He gazed out at
the multicolored sunset vista of plateaus and temples, canyons within
canyons, and thought he could almost see the hidden river below.
He stood there a long time, staring into the abyss, trying not to be
swallowed by it, knowing he could never really step away. None of us
could.
