The Great Abyss.

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 7^th 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.