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Published: July 23rd 2009
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July 16 - 17
(please note, there are two pages here of pics, and hopefully some video soon!)
Ever read Walker Percy's thoughts on the Grand Canyon? Take a look and tell us what YOU think. Is it possible to have an authentic experience of The Grand Canyon?
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ASCEND/ascentwpercy.html
Percy had it right when he said you might have to step off the beaten track, or you might have to get the Grand Canyon to yourself to really know the Grand Canyon. We were lucky to find a quiet, empty-of-people-trail to step back from the grand views and relax as quiet participants inside the canyon walls, affording us the best, truest experience of the Grand Canyon.
At the same time, Percy might have underestimated the removal that this modern generation has from the signage baggage of the symbol, and our ability to be jolted into the experience because of that removal.
We had certainly heard of the Grand Canyon, seen pictures of the Grand Canyon, I-maxes of the Grand Canyon, but all of those symbols were so far removed from our actual experience of the Grand Canyon itself. We were totally unprepared, for the truth
Utah Arch
Juan Rambo's crazy pilot friend fly through this once! was so unexpected. The Grand Canyon signified, it resonated so superbly and finely that all the European tourists snapping pictures of their belly button piercings, the Tennessee families complaining about said European tourists, and the smart-alecky kids whining that the Grand Canyon sky was no different from any other star-gazing sky, didn't stop those same stars from shining brighter for us. They didn't stop the canyons from mesmerizing us with their epic beauty and vast intensity and enfolding us in a joy of the land that I daresay neither of us have ever experienced before.
- Generalissmo
Grand Canyon at Sunset
We are out of the truck, we are walking, the sun is drowning on the rim and gold grows with steady dragon’s breath, spreading light into a vast split in the earth. No one told me the forest rolled down into it, like a hidden sloping planet driving a stake into the blue-green heart of the West.
Everything will be okay, nothing will be—the world is really too big to care just about you.
I should take pictures, I should shush the German children, I should tell the American teenagers
to stop throwing rocks into the Canyon, I should leap over the rail, walk off the rock, I should breath, I should fall 9,000 feet to the bottom, I should forget. Somewhere, when I wasn’t paying attention, the kite string snapped, and the better part of me lingered and walked on air over the rim.
The war still wages inside to get it right, to finally be something, but that one piece will always be out there, fearless, shining bright, perfect in self, and smiling 9,000 feet down, trailing a night wind that flies through the pines like an ocean wave.
-J Karankawa
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Lorien
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awe
You both should submit these pieces to a travel essay contest. Great writing about a great place!