Into the Canyon
SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM
When I was nineteen, a backpacker, and in Paris, many years ago, I looked out a train window and saw the Eiffel Tower. I’d forgotten about the tower’s existence so it was as if I had not only personally discovered it, but was the first to understand its stark, industrial beauty. This is one of the particular pleasures of travelling while young. Everything is new; everything is waiting to be discovered. You don’t know how many millions have done that elephant ride, that trek, or that wherever you are staying used to be so much better before it was discovered (ten years, twenty years, fifty years ago). You can find your way into experience that feels like your own.
When I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time, back in the early ’90s, I felt a similar sense of overwhelming surprise and pleasure, despite the fact that in this case I’d sought it out. I’ll never forget that moment of getting out of the car in a relatively prosaic car park and walking towards the North Rim. Despite the canyon’s enormity – it is close to 2000 square miles – it comes upon you suddenly as you walk towards its edge and look down into it: this extraordinary ravine that plunges deep into the earth. It was late afternoon and the canyon walls were a series of striated purples. The rocks and the light – it was hard to distinguish one from the other – shifted from grey to lilac, from dark purple to black. I was awestruck. The visit was so brief that when I left the next day it was as if I’d dreamt the landscape, one so beautiful it’s hard to believe it actually existed.
But you can’t pursue the purity of the unexpected moment, and ignorance isn’t an answer. It certainly pays to know what you’re doing when you visit the Grand Canyon. Despite the fact that it’s one of the most popular national parks in the world, with around five million visitors a year, only 1 percent of these visitors ever make it below the rim – one of the best ways to appreciate the grandeur of the place – and of those who do, around 250 need to be rescued each year. Worse still, a not inconsiderable number of them die. Over the 96 years of the park’s existence, an average of twelve people have died a year.
It’s easy to see how this happens. If you’re not an experienced walker, it’s hard to imagine how demanding the descent to the Colorado River far below, and the return from it, will be. You can’t imagine how much water you might need when the sun beats on you from above, or what it’s like to bake in temperatures as high as 120° Fahrenheit. This is why signs everywhere warn you not to be casual when you estimate your endurance, and discourage you from hiking from rim to river and back again in a single day.
When I arrived at the entrance to the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park late last year, I had no desire to walk to the Colorado River and back in a single day, but nor was I aware of the dangers of doing so. All the first sign at the gate warned us of was the fact that there would be no refund if weather conditions meant there wasn’t a good view. My partner and I looked at each other. Do people really do that? Demand refunds if the canyon doesn’t display its extraordinary dimensions, its subtle light shows? Apparently so. We pulled into the car park further down the road and I tried to repeat the moment when I’d first spied the canyon some twenty years before. Alas, it’s hard to recycle profundity.
That night the decision was made to walk some of the Bright Angel Trail, the path that descends from the rim to the river. I knew about it because my 21-year-old godson had told me it was a good walk, though ‘kinda challenging’. I certainly hadn’t read the report of Spanish explorers in 1540 who, after several hours and having covered only a third of the distance to the river, had returned to the rim, reporting that ‘what seemed easy from above was not so’. Now I can report that they were correct and that in this, as all things, perspective is everything. The descent (and ascent) along the trail is so sheer that you can’t see what’s in store for you when you look at it from above. Two days later, after we’d walked down Bright Angel Trail to Plateau Point and back, about 11 miles roundtrip, we cycled far enough along the rim to get a better view – and it was then that we understood what it was we’d undertaken.
However, the morning when we headed off on our impromptu hike, our band of four adults and two kids under thirteen was as deluded as most of the Grand Canyon’s other visitors. It was a cool day, so we didn’t struggle with high temperatures. The first part of the walk, down to Indian Gardens, was easy enough and the zigzag of the paths, the sheer walls of the canyon, and the persistent plodding of the mule trains were hypnotic. The gardens, when we got to them, were an oasis, sitting at what we first thought was the bottom of the canyon, though in fact they were a good quarter of a mile above it as the crow plummets. Cottonwood trees lined the creek, and leaves glittered gold, brown, and pale yellow in the autumn light. The grass was green and the harshness of the canyon’s sheer walls faded away. Havasupai Indians lived and farmed these gardens until 1928, when the National Park Service drove them out, and I tried to imagine what it was like to live down here in such a private, remote, and dramatic place. The contrast between the gardens and the one-and-a-half-mile trail to Plateau Point added to the drama. The flatlands around the trail were populated with thousands of purple cacti, and within ten minutes of walking through them, we felt as if we’d been walking an hour, not because it was strenuous but because it was so otherworldly.
But the point of this story is not the walk, it’s that walking on and down into a landscape bonds you to a place, even if that walk includes a five-mile hike back up the canyon during which you ascend close to half a mile straight up: an incline that at first leaves you cursing, but soon reduces you to speechlessness. Over the eight hours it took to walk what was only eleven miles, we became sensitive to the moods and light of the canyon, which shifted from shaded to gentle morning sunlight, to harsh midday sun, then back towards those purplish hues I remembered from my first trip.
We fell in love with the canyon even more the following day when we cycled the rim and spied a condor, some mule deer, and a stand of conifer carved by the wind into a dreamscape of bonsai.
By the time we left, four nights after we arrived, we’d been at the canyon long enough to get down into it, travel around it, and see it in every kind of light. We were sated. We certainly had no expectations of our final morning. As we packed the car, half-asleep in the almost dark of dawn, my partner gestured to the canyon: ‘Look at that’.
So I looked. What I saw was a great ocean of dense white cloud that pulsed, and shimmied from side to side, as well up towards, then down from, the canyon rim. The entire gorge was filled with thick clouds and mist. It throbbed as the rising sun played across it. Day broke in a series of pale greys and blues, then pink with golden flashes. The tips of the peaks scattered through the canyon floated like tiny islands. Later I was told that what we had seen was called a cloud inversion. It was rare.
We stood at the rim for some time, just outside the Bright Angel Lodge. People slowly realised what was happening and stood silently, with the exception of the woman who muttered that the clouds were ruining the view. We wondered if she was going to ask for her money back. Native Americans working on the heritage building sites along the rim all laid down their tools and joined the crowds. It was as if we were all of us, a group of strangers, worshipping nature.
There is a word to describe this sense of giving over to some greater force: numinous. Some use the word to mean religious ecstasy, but for me it was a reminder of why we seek nature out, what we are losing as the wilderness is driven into increasingly remote pockets of the earth. I felt honoured. It was a reminder of the privilege that travel can afford. A reminder that travel will never stop surprising us, even when we’re standing in the midst of one of the most densely touristed places on the planet.
SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM has been on the publishing scene in Australia for 30 years. She is a former publisher and editor, as well as the author of two novels, Geography and Bird, and two books of non-fiction, Melbourne and Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy. Her next book will be
about walking places. She has travelled widely and her writing about those travels has been published in a range of anthologies, magazines, and newspapers. Her hometown is Melbourne, Australia, but she currently lives in San Francisco, California.
Getting Lost
STEVEN AMSTERDAM
My family never went a-rambling. I’m not complaining, but I was always in awe of those parents who put the kids into the car on a Saturday morning and when asked, Where are we going?, told them, We’ll see. The sheer joy of the wind in our hair or where the day might take us was never the draw.
We travelled with purpose, to places that had already been researched by an advance guard, usually the esteemed Automobile Club of America. As soon as we were buckled in, these questions were answerable: When will we get there?, What will we see?, and Where will we eat? In this way we expanded our range slowly outward from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, establishing safe, knowable boundaries – to the maternal grandparents in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, to the relatives in DC, to historic Boston and Colonial Williamsburg, and so on.
We celebrated the purchase of a maroon ’75 Valiant by driving Route 95, extending our reach to Florida (and the paternal grandparents). Eventually, there was air travel, both cross-country and overseas. My father was the consummate guide for each of these adventures, plotting our trail weeks in advance, anticipating every step with an up-to-date Michelin or Fodor’s guide, a stack of relevant articles at his side, and one magically assembled AAA Triptik, which personalized our vacation one loose-leaf page at a time. AAA knew everything. When the driving was done for the afternoon, my father would drop mother, sister, and me at the pre-booked Days Inn (quiet location, ideally with a view of the pool, and a AAA discount) so we could have a swim while he would go suss out the nearby restaurants, three stars or higher.
This is how travel happened: You unfolded maps across the kitchen table, followed suggested itineraries, and incorporated advice from the cousin who’d been there three years ago. When all the phone calls were made and the schedule was firm, you packed (two days in advance), and if you were flying, you were at the airport three hours early (even domestic). When there were screw-ups – a wrong turn, a lost reservation (or this one time in Villa Vizcaya in Miami, no film in the camera for the whole day) – there were words, followed by silences, but mostly we buzzed along in bliss, confident that we had all we needed (crayons!) and knew exactly where we were going.
One Friday, almost two decades later, after I had moved to California, dutifully learned to drive, and bought a ’74 Dart, a friend suggested we break it in with a trip to the desert.
‘To where?’
‘Wherever. Does it matter? Bring a toothbrush.’
‘A toothbrush? How long are we going for?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘How can you live like that?’
‘How can you not?’
A few hours later we were alone in the hills of the Anza-Borrego Desert, which I hadn’t known existed until a few minutes before we drove through the entrance to the park. Then and there (at least according to my memory), I vowed to predetermine as little as possible. Travelling without a destination, map, or even a plan would provide its own kind of orientation, maybe even improve my sleep.
From that point on, whenever I saw the chance, I slipped out of town. I would fill a bottle of water and drive, telling myself the freeway would decide. If I could see a town or a park that had an enticing name or looked good from the road, I made the turnoff. These outings wobbled at first. More often than not, they brought me to forests that were less pastoral than they were weedy and towns with charms too subtle for my discernment. The wisdom gained was usually that it was getting dark and I was hungry. But I did learn patience with the road. If there was no place to get to, what was so bad about a wrong turn?
A few years later, I was back in New York looking for a job, no clearer ambition than something in publishing. After one interview, the universe obliged with an offer. I told the boss I could start in a month, then booked a ticket to Beijing, using United miles I’d been hoarding for years. Four days later, I landed in China with a backpack and no guidebook. This was a test. The airport bus dropped me at a concrete hostel, situated on a ten-lane boulevard, a few miles from the city center, where jet lag helped me appreciate the morning rush of trucks, lawn mowers, bicycles, and Mercedes.
My China itinerary was intentionally empty, except for the Forbidden City, which I discovered the next morning was closed for the week. I decided to view this not as a setback but as a challenge. Or better yet, a choice: A, I could flagellate myself for not having done my research and hunker down for the wait, or B, I could float easily onwards, maintaining a half-smiling bubble of Zen whateverness.
I chose B. The Forbidden City wasn’t going away. Some place quieter beckoned. How about Mongolia? That sounded far.
Without even looking, the ticket agent told me there was nothing to Mongolia for two weeks. The speed with which she said this was suspicious, as if I’d failed to proffer the password to get to Ulan Bator. Should I stand my ground or move on? Again, I chose option B.
A poster of limestone mountains in the south provided enough spark. I bought a ticket for Guilin, departing the next morning. A prepared traveler, I rose early the next day and caught the bus to the airport with ample time to make my plane. Somehow the express bus seemed to lose its mission midway to the airport, however, and began getting on and off the highway in a route that seemed local, almost circular. I tried not to sweat, willing myself to focus on my fellow riders and their various planes, and to believe that if I missed mine, something good would turn up. In the end, my plane was just as delayed as the bus. China, I decided, was a fine place to be plan-less.
Even from above, the mountains near Guilin are ridiculous. Artfully scattered around twists of the Li River, they shoot straight up as if they had bloomed from the fields. They have well-cragged peaks topped with gnarled cypress trees that aren’t afraid of heights. Footpaths, made by and for centuries of tourists, circle sheer forests and lead all the way up to mountaintops that are lost to cloud cover in the morning. There in the mist, a tiny dot of a wooden shrine may be visible, ready for prayer or a photo op with the pastoral plateau below. A first-timer could be forgiven for thinking the landscape was inspired by ancient paintings and not the other way around.
At the airport, the streams of people looking for transportation into Guilin made my choice easy. I found a nearly empty bus headed in the other direction, and took it to a town at the southern end of the mountains. Rooms were cheap and came with shared toilets and calendar-worthy views. Every other building seemed to have a stack of bicycles leaning up against the doorway, all yearning to be rented.
I thought I’d discovered Shangri-La. Flipping through a Lonely Planet on the hostel bookshelf told me a decade of backpackers had beaten me to it. Immediately, the comfort of the place was suspect, which is to say that although I appreciated the muesli, yogurt, and honey that came with the low-key breakfast buffet on the wooden porch at the back of the hostel, I wanted more.
Yes, I had knocked together a holiday on short notice – radical, given my influences, but no huge feat for a first-world tourist with a functioning credit card. There had to be a greater risk/reward out there. I envisioned a true walkabout, consisting of equal parts epic beauty and epic danger. My fantasy had one more ingredient – assured survival, ideally by my own wits. To be clear, there are degrees of lost – being mapless in the Louvre and mapless in the Amazon Delta are different things. I was willing to accept slightly less danger for tidier closure. A true explorer would embrace the possibly suicidal nature of the mission: Truly getting lost may mean staying lost. For me, anything that didn’t end up involving the American Embassy would suffice. And no injuries or illnesses, please.
The next morning I set out to find it (what?), this time for real. I paid for my room a week in advance so I wouldn’t be miss
ed if I didn’t make it back that night. (Surely Amelia Earhart never threw such caution to such wind.) To further hide my tracks, I walked to the far side of town before renting a bicycle and heading north. I took random lefts and rights as fast I could, always veering away from the main road to Guilin, and into the foothills of the thickest cluster of mountains. The further I pedalled, the more I left the majestic for the rustic. Persimmons and tomatoes were laid out on sheets in the sun, meaty smoke poured from the chimney of an old brick house. Women and men rode past me on bicycles that had seen far less maintenance than mine, with side baskets carrying grass, eggplants, and swaddled pigs. No one bothered to even acknowledge the gwai lo in their midst. All the better.
In high valleys, a few steeply planted farms provided perfect disorientation. I turned onto an overgrown dirt trail, seeking true oblivion. At first, it complied, serpentining and steepening downward, leaving me to pump the useless brakes and swerve around dips in the road to keep from wiping out. When it finally levelled, civilization returned, with the overgrowth pulling back from the road to reveal that I was coasting right into a village on a bend of the Li River, easily identified by the large tourist boats drifting by. Foiled, but not stopped.
A single low wooden boat, painted with a distinctly non-standard pink Nike swoosh, bobbed at the shore. People were boarding it from the water’s edge, carrying their vegetables, already limp from the sun, and chickens, trussed into passivity. I parked my bike, then negotiated a seat on a splintering bench in the back, next to an apparently unaccompanied chicken. Once the boat was moving, I used my pitiful sign language to ask if one of the humans could write down the name of the town. A middle-aged woman, wearing a baby in front and a toddler on her back, complied. I thanked her as best I could, folded the writing I couldn’t read, and zippered it into my backpack. (Yes, it was one breadcrumb, but I wasn’t enlightened enough to consider abandoning someone else’s bicycle.)
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