Day 5: The North Rim

On the Fourth of July, my dad has a tradition of grilling succulent burgers in our backyard for supper. My mom slices juicy tomatoes from our garden to accompany the hamburgers, and once we are well-fed, my family travels forty-five minutes to Colonial Williamsburg, a re-creation of a historic town which served as Virginia’s capitol in the 1700s, and hefts lawn chairs to an open patch of grass. Then, we wait there until dusk, exchanging stories and playing games until fireworks begin blossoming into the air above us with cannon-like thuds resounding in the distance. This year, however, Heather and I would be celebrating the holiday in a rather different manner: on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Once our backpack was filled with granola bars and water bottles, I picked up my hiking boots, still damp from our excursion into The Narrows, and set them on a towel in the back seat in hopes that the summer sun might finish drying them while we travelled. I substituted a sweet tea from the McDonald’s in Kanab, Utah for my breakfast, and off we went for miles across flat, dusty land. We ascended into the Kaibab National Forest, and in the midst of short-statured, thorny trees appeared a cluster of Navajo vendors by the side of the road. We pulled over, and three artisans greeted us behind tables of turquoise jewelry and intricately carved pottery. Heather chose a necklace strung with beads the color of the sky and juniper berries; the latter, we learned, is a source of food and medicine in traditional Navajo life and is an important component of the tribe’s spiritual beliefs.

South of this clearing, the land gradually become more verdant until the shrubbed forest had transitioned into grassy fields bordered with pine trees. With our surroundings appearing more like an alpine meadow than a barren desert, I was tempted to believe we were much farther north than Arizona, but a sign welcoming us to the park quelled my uncertainty; the Grand Canyon lay only a few miles away. Soon, we arrived at the welcome center, and as we pulled into a parking spot, I noticed a deep gulch directly in front of us. I looked at Heather and raised my eyebrows; Could this be it? I thought, and I turned to my right where I could see a row of pines ending abruptly in the distance.

We quickly gathered our backpack and cameras and laced up our hiking shoes. I had started to pick up the ones in the back seat, but finding them still heavy with moisture, left them behind and pulled out a pair of high-top boots I had in reserve. Heather and I picked our way across blankets of pine straw and earth beside the gully until it joined the main canyon, and all at once, the trees disappeared, and we were standing on the edge, the view more tangible than it had been from the air four days before. An immense vastness rushed away from us and extended miles into the distance, interrupted occasionally by colossal rock formations which direct the Colorado River so far below. The land looked like the inversion of an impressive mountain range, its valley as sunken down from the surface as high peaks protrude from the ground. How can grand even begin to capture the majesty in front of me? I thought to myself. Though the sight held me transfixed, I was eager to get my bearing on the land, but I began to understand that while places like Bryce Canyon and Zion presented themselves as natural playgrounds to be explored and romped around in, the Grand Canyon represented a place I could only appreciate, not conquer.

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Nestled into the rim overlooking this expanse sits the Grand Canyon Lodge. To commemorate the holiday, patriotic banners billowed out from the wooden posts along the building’s portico, and a miniature train bedecked with flags greeted us as it circled the courtyard. Heather and I walked inside the oversized cabin and into its cavernous lobby where bulbs beneath yellowed shades cast faint gold hues onto the wood and stone composing the floor and walls. I couldn’t imagine how this would provide sufficient indoor lighting until I noticed a large den just down a short staircase in front of us. Squashy leather armchairs filled the room and faced massive windows which reached toward the ceiling, displaying another incredible view which made me feel like I was floating somewhere above the canyon peering down into it.

The scents of homecooked food drew my attention away from the den and toward a dining room full of people to my right. Though we hadn’t encountered many people yet that day, (certainly nowhere near the multitude we would encounter at the South Rim the following day) the few I did see around me—families eating together at long wooden tables, hikers wandering along the ridge outside, even those who were reading and gazing out the windows—all seemed to exude the joy of the occasion. We were celebrating our Independence Day as a diasporic community, away from our homes but together in the presence of one of our country’s most magnificent wonders.

With lunchtime upon us, I walked over to a menu posted on a wooden placard outside the dining room and read through the descriptions of delicious entrees of penne, trout, and duck, but even enticing adjectives couldn’t mask the numbers beside them which surpassed even those at the German bakery near Zion. Heather and I exited the lodge to find more economical options and happened upon a small grill where we dined more simply on a truly American food: hotdogs. Then, with lunch finished, we returned to the car to venture out to another area of the North Rim.

On our way, we stopped to listen to a talk about the Native Americans who had lived in the area centuries before, groups who migrated from the canyon rim to the Colorado River in the winter and back up again come summertime to hunt and grow crops. After the 1500-foot climb to Angels Landing two days before, I couldn’t imagine attempting a hike with a mile elevation gain that didn’t even have chains installed along the way.

A few miles farther on, we reached the end of the road and hiked out to Cape Royal Point, an outcropping facing monumental formations with names such as Vishnu’s Temple and Wotan’s Throne as if their grandeur naturally linked them with deities from far-off lands. In the distance, I could just make out a bend of the Colorado. It didn’t seem more than a wide stream from where I stood, but just as Zion Canyon was birthed from the persistent nagging of the Virgin against the stones of the Colorado Plateau, so too must the Colorado River have whittled its way downward through the landscape of northern Arizona until it formed the elaborate network of indentions now known as the Grand Canyon. The park shared another similarity with Zion: As hikers promenaded around the outlook, overweight squirrels quite like the ones near the Narrows harangued do-gooders for their welfare. Obviously, they had been as successful at their trade as other squirrels in the National Park system.

Heather and I backtracked to another branch of the walking trail which led onto a thin finger of rock jutting out into the canyon void, all the while keeping an eye on a horde of dark clouds scurrying toward us overhead. Although a chain-link fence circled the periphery, I had the sense that I was hiking out onto a prohibited space. Uneven rocks made me leery of twisting my ankle, but I carefully traversed the kitchen-sized platform and peered over the edge. I didn’t have a good handle on our exact height, but it was clear to me that were I to trip and fall from this ledge and make contact with the ground below, there would be little chance of survival. So, I yanked my camera out of its protective case, snapped a picture and immediately turned back for the more conventional trail.

On our drive back to the lodge a few minutes later, I glanced to my right as the forest opened up to reveal a glimpse of the canyon beyond and instantly recognized the tan, chain-link-fence-crowned edifice we had just visited. However, from this vantage point, I could make out a natural window I hadn’t noticed earlier, one created when boulders had broken off the cliff face and left a large gap about thirty feet below where we had recently been standing. Oh, the lengths the National Park Service goes to in order to keep our experience as natural and uninhibited as possible!

The storm clouds we had been watching finally released their contents, but instead of rain we were soon surrounded by ice pellets falling onto the plateau around us. Although I could remember an Easter Sunday in April when Virginia had snow on the ground, this certainly qualified as the latest ice storm of the season that I had ever witnessed. The rest of the drive became a game of Mario Kart with Heather dodging small rock slides and oncoming cars along the narrow, twisting road. At a safe spot, Heather pulled over, and I imprinted my flipflopped feet into the white ground.

The temperature had dropped several degrees as evening settled in, but unfortunately, fireworks at the North Rim were not to be: A fire ban was in effect for up to fifty miles away, prohibiting the ideal ending to our Independence Day. This wasn’t a surprise to us, however. During our trip out West so far, the signs along the highway which indicated the daily fire threat had never dipped below “Very High,” and on this day the cautionary red arrow pointed to “Extreme.” Nevertheless, once we returned to the lodge, we made our way outside to a stone patio flanking the den and focused our attention on a faint, blinking red light in the distance which we hoped might be a firework display. Heather settled herself onto a stone ledge beneath the lodge’s windows, but I left her after a few minutes, feeling pessimistic about our chances of seeing a faraway show. Instead, I contented myself with going inside and listening to a presentation being given on the dire situation of water shortages in the Southwest. After our speaker had finished and taken a few questions, he told us a bit about himself and said he had graduated a couple of weeks before from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. I leaned back, a couple of thousand miles from home, and smiled to think that he would know the exact place the rest of my family was gathered that very evening, waiting for color to cover the sky.

Strolling outside, I found Heather gazing out into the now pitch-black void where the mysterious light still shone, perhaps from a radio tower somewhere to the south. I joined her on the stone perch, and we sat there late into the night listening to hikers and families in the den and on the patio who shared stories about their hikes and their travels, what they had seen and where they would be going when they left the North Rim. The Fourth of July came to a close as their words and their laughter echoed out over the canyon and into its unseen depths.