The Grand Canyon

Friday

I arrived at the Grand Canyon in mid-afternoon and spent some time just driving around the Canyon Village loop roads trying to figure out where to go. Finally I stopped in the parking lot of the General Store, ate a light lunch of pasta salad and then decided that with the many hiking trails and shuttle buses I could see, I might as well just find a camping spot, leave Gertie parked and proceed on foot from there.

I almost parked at the commercial Trailer Village campground, but after I got a look at it—row after row of bare cement RV pads with hookups, interspersed with a few pitiful shrubs—I made a U-turn and instead entered the adjacent Mather campground. What a difference! Mather has no hookups, just picnic tables and grills. But it's an idyllic setting in a forest of tall pines. Dappled sunlight comes through and lights up the grassy clearings...altogether it's a delightful place. I feel sorry for the people who paid an extra five bucks to camp in the desolate Trailer Village site, just so they could have electricity to run their satellite TVs. They don't know what they're missing!

I parked, got Gertie leveled and walked over to the bus stop, where I caught a shuttle bus to the nearest observation point (Mather Point). The park has three different shuttle bus routes, with each having buses running every half hour or oftener, and once you get over the initial confusion and figure out which one you want, the system works very well. The drivers I encountered were unfailingly friendly and extremely helpful in explaining the various options. And the buses run from an hour before sunrise until well after sunset—ideal for photographers!

Mather Point is probably the first and easiest place to get to in the park, so it wouldn't surprise me to hear that experienced Grand Canyon aficionados look down on it as a tourist-infested pesthole. But I knew that in the limited time available to me there was no point in my trying to range all over the canyon looking for the best photo opportunities. I'd have to pick one or two places and concentrate on them. And I knew that I didn't have a chance of equalling the spectacular panoramas of my friend Leon Witwer, an old Canyon hand who knows just where and when to shoot. I hoped to focus on smaller details that others may have overlooked. How well I succeeded I won't know until I have time to look through these images at leisure, but I think I got at least a few good ones.

After about an hour I felt that I had exhausted the possibilities of the late-afternoon light at Mather Point. I had noted a few vantage points that I thought would look good at sunset, so I returned to Gertie (a half-hour bus ride), had a cup of yogurt and read some of the well-designed literature given me when I entered the park. As I left the rig at 6:30 p.m. to go back for some sunset shots, I was approached by a young Israeli who asked about the bright orange Lynx leveling blocks I used to raise Gertie's rear. We fell into conversation, and it turned out that he and his buddies had just gotten out of the Israeli army and were taking a stateside vacation before entering college in the fall. They had started at San Diego and were headed up to Yellowstone and points north. Good time of year to do it—before the big tourist rush starts!

I saw a lot of foreigners while at the Canyon. There was a young German couple with a toddler camped across from me in a rented RV; I could hear them calling to each other. "Mutti! Ich kann meine Hosen nicht finden!" ("Mommy! I can't find my pants!") Later in the evening I met three German teens while walking back from the shuttle bus. And I often heard snatches of foreign languages as I strolled about. It was fun!

Rented RVs were another common theme. Recent-model Fleetwood motorhomes—similar in appearance to Gertie, but of much lower quality—they made up at least a third of the RVs I saw. Apparently the strategy is to fly into Flagstaff or another Southwestern city, rent an RV for a week or two, drive around seeing the sights, and then fly home. Makes perfect sense. Too bad the rental agencies are using cheesy Fleetwoods, but I suppose as long as they are well maintained they're probably OK. Nobody is "fulltiming" (living full time) in these rigs, after all.

I might have chatted longer with the Israeli youth, but I was worried about missing the sunset, so after ten minutes or so I headed to the bus stop and back to Mather Point. I was not disappointed. It was truly beautiful. I shot a number of wide-angle images, some tele shots of details that were especially interesting, and a few panoramas—both vertical and horizontal. I also shot a few stereo pairs by the time-honored weight-shifting method.

I think that being a sometime stereographer and a lifelong 3D buff helps even my 2D compositions, because it makes me very aware of depth...and how easily it is lost in a flat print. One of the most difficult things to do in photographing a subject like the Grand Canyon that has tremendous depth is to render that in a 2D medium. When shooting "flat," I'm careful to include a foreground, middleground and background whenever possible to help sell the illusion of depth.

Sitting there watching the shadows rise up the layered rocks, I couldn't help thinking about my friend Silvie, who was originally going to make this trip with me. She would have loved this spectacle, and it would have been much more enjoyable with her. I'm sorry that things didn't work out so she could come. The whole trip would have been better with her along.

Two things detracted from my enjoyment of the Grand Canyon. One was, of course, the people. Even though this is mid-May—far from the height of the tourist season—I was always surrounded by chattering people. There was no way to just sit and soak in the tranquillity of the place, or hear the Canyon's own sounds. Interestingly, though, this is one of the few places I've been where every other person hasn't been gabbing on a cell phone. I guess the grandeur of the Canyon is enough to stop that impulse, at least for a bit. (Or maybe there are no cell towers!)

The other thing that I couldn't get away from was the thought of death by falling. Oh, I don't mean that I was seriously scared, but there was a constant undertone of worry. The railings are literally a couple of inches from the edge, and it would be so easy to slip and fall over. The Park Service literature said that every year, several people do in fact fall to their deaths. After all, it's a mile down! I was extremely careful not to become one of them: I picked my way over the rocks with great care, watched my footing when taking pictures and didn't even touch the handrails—I didn't want to get that close! When I saw others posing for photos while seated casually on the handrail with their backs to the Canyon, I just turned away—I didn't even want to look, lest I be witness to a fatal fall.

When I was a child I had pretty severe acrophobia. I was afraid to sit in a movie theater balcony for fear I would somehow stumble, roll down the aisle and flip over the edge. Absurd, yes—but I couldn't get away from that fear. At that stage in my life I would only have been able to approach a place like the Grand Canyon by crawling on my belly to peer cautiously over the edge—preferably with someone holding onto my feet! That childhood phobia is almost entirely gone now...but I can't help thinking about how easy it is to die in a place like this. (One could reasonably make the same argument about Manhattan—but Manhattan holds no beauty for me to justify the risk.)

On the other hand (is this a contradiction?), I couldn't help fantasizing about how wonderful it would be to have a personal antigrav harness, so that I could lift over that handrail and sail out over the canyon, exploring every part at my leisure from any altitude—a mile high or a foot off the ground. That wouldn't scare me; that would be heaven!

I lingered an hour or more until twilight was beginning to close in and the air had become chilly, then walked back to the bus stop and headed home to Gertie. By the time we reached the Mather campsites it was dark, but I had had the foresight to bring a very good pocket fluorescent light—perfect for pathfinding, as it casts a broad, very even light. A couple of German girls got off with me and headed in the same direction, so I led the way. I would have liked to engage them in conversation, but I know how easy it is to get out of my depth with my rusty German, so I confined myself to general remarks about how chilly it was.

Back inside Gertie I put on the kettle and made a cup of hot cinnamon-flavored cocoa; then I put on a Django Reinhardt MP3 disc and sat down to type this up. If I can manage to get up early enough tomorrow (about 5:30 a.m.), I'll try to catch the sunrise from Mather Point. After that, I'll head out in an easterly direction, hightailing it across northern Arizona and New Mexico. I don't know how far I'll get, but I really need to make up time for the next few days. I haven't plotted mileages, but with luck I may make it to Terra Studios (near Fayetteville, Arkansas) on Monday or Tuesday.