At the Edge

I read this quote recently from Alain de Botton: "Life is like a party where guests try to ignore a concealed sniper who takes them out one by one."

Exactly! Believe me, I've been acutely aware lately of the sniper at the party, but I managed to successfully ignore him during some wonderfully distracting travel this month.

First there was a pleasant trip to visit friends in northern California, and then, of course, Utah, mostly in the area around Zion National Park, with one foray out to Toroweap Point, at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in western Arizona.

Our expedition to Toroweap involved about 60 miles of rugged dirt road driving in a rented 4-wheel-drive SUV....along a remote, barren stretch of dust and rock and washboard, past tumblin' tumbleweed, now and then an abandoned old shed, a few scrawny cows, and eventually, the edge of the world.

It was stunning, strange, spectacular.

Also steep and vertical and dizzying to look down.

We wandered along flat rock shelves leading to a sheer cliff, feeling appropriately precarious. 3,000 feet below us, the Colorado River was a winding green channel dotted with bright yellow rafts. The midday light was glaring and hazy, and the day took on the aura of a mirage.I'm so glad I got to go there.

Not to always make it about me, but I needed to re-do a Grand Canyon pilgrimage. Back in the 1970s I traveled with two friends to Utah and Arizona in a VW bug, sitting in the backseat with the cooler, sort of watching their marriage unravel and the miles going by. It was the first time I'd ever been Out West, and it seemed like another planet to me, deserts and cactus and weird rock formations. But I was so lonely and sad, I couldn't really appreciate it.

I remember us pulling into KOA campgrounds at night, and me finding a phone booth, and calling my father (collect, no less), so self-indulgent of me, tearfully calling him from another planet just because I was feeling sorry for myself, leaving him with that sense of helpless worry that I never understood until I became a parent myself.

Anyway, at one point we neared the Grand Canyon, a landmark so famous we had actually heard of it, and we figured it was worth a quick detour to take a look. We parked, looked, snapped a photo or two, and returned to the car, where I climbed back to my cramped little place by the cooler and wondered what the hell I was going to do with my life.

"Well, we've seen the Grand Canyon, and it's a big yawn." said one of my companions, memorably.

So forgive me for lapsing into personal memories in the face of something so infinitely vast and wondrous, but going to Toroweap was like a personal victory for me even beyond the breathtaking views. I may be forty years older than I was when I last stood before the Grand Canyon, but I certainly feel happier and far more alive.

And all I can think of lately is how privileged I am to have fleetingly passed through, to have been, to have seen.Pay no attention to the sniper in the room.

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