Overview

What can be said of the Grand Canyon that hasn't been said before or better by gifted poets? This age-old chasm proves what wonders a simple river can work given time and patience, crafting a gorge of immeasurable beauty whose scale is so beyond communicated impressions that only first-hand sighting can elicit the awesome response it demands. Difficult to fathom, then, that early explorers, thwarted by its immensity, believed the Canyon to be ultimately useless. Imagine their response today to the five million visitors who make annual pilgrimages to the mesmerizing, desolate expanse. For prospecting miners and then early tourists who spent weeks in elegant, rustic lodges, the Canyon has been a source of restoration and communion. Nowadays, the strong-willed join in and wage battle against steep terrain, unrelenting sun, and the roiling river deep in the mighty trench. A strange allure calls them to share stories, gaze in awe towards the horizon, and forge a brief, strong camaraderie only possible at the brink of time and history. Not many natural wonders are simultaneously so accessible and so alien, provoking quick respect for a planet able to produce such beauty through catastrophic erosion. Perhaps, then, the oft-quoted words of Teddy Roosevelt speak for all initiates when they implore, "Keep this great wonder of nature as it is now... The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and all who come after...Keep the Grand Canyon as it is."

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