1974 - 18
My high school buddy and I drive out from Florida and camp at the South Rim. In a few weeks we are off to college in Chicago and Ithaca. My girlfriend is a dangling participle soon to be a period.
It’s early August and we hike down to the bottom of the canyon, swim in the empty river, and hike out the same day. On the hike up thru the dry desert heat, we pass an older man marooned without water by a half-shadowed outcropping. He explains quietly, calmly, what he needs - a ranger, a burro, water. We share our water and I nearly run up the trail, a teen immortal, to Indian Gardens and a ranger, who rides her burro down to the rescue.
And I have no idea.
1988 - 32
I have a week off between corporate law jobs - nowhere to go and no one to go with. I fly to Phoenix in winter and drive north thru the white birches and snow of the desert mesas. I wake before dawn, stepping round, slipping down the packed snow at the rim top of the Bright Angel Trail and then down to the river to the canyon's desert embrace. On the hike up I meet two girls, and we talk for a few minutes.
I am starting to get an idea.
1990 - 34
My girlfriend and I drive to the North Rim thru the gold quaking aspens of October, aglow. Our cabin has no hot water and we shower in the cold and huddle beneath thin quilts and thin air 8,000 feet above the river. A man rises at 5 am next door, coughing incessantly, before departing. We sleep in and then drive the empty roads, spotting a solitary wolf just at the edge of the forest. He stares directly at us, as if he knows me. She stays up top and I hike down, snap some postcards, peer at the ridges and the clouds.
2007 - 51
For the last week of summer, my 9 year old son and I stop in Phoenix for a day before heading north. We watch a Diamondbacks' game in their domed, air conditioned field. The heat persists into the evening and we take a basketball out to the lighted court and he scampers thru the heat, shouting, shooting, immortal. I have not seen him at it for awhile, and see that he has learned a bit of play. We walk back to our room and he says "I will never be as good at this game as you".
At the canyon, we hike to Indian Garden, rest for lunch, and hike back up -- 9 miles, 9 years. He struggles some as do I and at the finish he says happily, tiredly, over and over, "I can't believe you made me walk 9 miles." I tell him that he will return in 10 years and hike to the river and back.
We drive to Havapi Point before dusk. I tell him I could sit here for an hour just watching the light play on the stone buttes and temples named Shiva, Isis, Buddha, Brahma, Cheops, Osiris, Manu. He seems bored, but as I convene with Manu, he busies himself with the camera and the telescope and soon is chirping about the suspension bridge he sees near phantom ranch below. Finally, he says "let's go, I let you stay for half an hour". I thank him.
I catch him then for a second, face half in light half shadow, backdropped by the red rocks and the dusk, looking me flat in the eye, smiling, perhaps ready.
2016 - 60
My son leaves for college in a few days. He drives us much of the way to the canyon into the night. Beside him I doze off the medicine, startling at phantoms.
This time he can reach the river, but not I, so we hike down a couple miles, mostly silent. Back at the rim, Isis waves, a little vaguely.
We share a bite at a rough hewn table by the canyon's edge, peering equably at the ridges descending down.