Leaving friends is a hard thing to do, especially since I enjoy my short time with them with furious intensity. As I left Albuquerque (four hours late, due to car trouble, and nearly $500 short, because Firestone charges top dollar for minimal parts and labor) I thought back to my previous long days of driving. Between Georgia and Arkansas, for instance: such beautiful greenery and farmland, and I shocked a ‘good-o-boy’ at an Autozone by not only knowing what the EGR valve is, but where it is and why it was setting of my check engine light (I’ll admit to being a little short with him, but I’ve noticed that I have no patience anymore for people who automatically assume I wouldn’t know something because I am a girl). Again, leaving Tulsa and my Gnomeo, the snap decision to take a right turn and see a museum, it helps because leaving people is hard, and I need a distraction. The sunset going through Texas was amazing, with green tinges and everything. I had wished for a co=pilot, but no one has time or funds to come with me (gas is killing my bank account…). Once finally out of Albuquerque, I had to skip Petroglyph National Monument and the wolf sanctuary, which really made me upset (it would’ve been amazing to at least do one). Going through New Mexico I had a thought that I could live here amongst all the beauty and Earth. Until the wind picked up. Then it was like driving through Kansas all over again; I hate my little car being tossed by the winds, and hate even more having to pass Trailers doing the same wind-swerve-dance that I’m doing. We do this until I nearly reach Flagstaff, where it gets cold FAST. I pull into town to fill up and there snow and ice in accumulation, unlike the highway. I freeze as I pump gas, and when I go inside to get a coffee, I talk to the clerk about how this is crazy, there isn’t snow in Kansas or Virginia yet! He laughs at me that this is 7000ft above sea level, they’ll have snow until late spring.
Back onto the freeway, we come to a total stop. There are several collisions ahead of me on the 40WB, and the road is closed until they clear them. I sit wedged between two trailers for nearly two hours. Call the hotel, let them know; call some family, complain my ass off; play some games on my phone, bored to death… We finally start moving at about 11PM. It takes almost an hour to get to HW64, which is my right turn to the Grand Canyon; then it’s almost another hour and a half, going below the speed limit, because yes, I had to dodge elk and deer on my way to the hotel. The elk was just hanging out on the road, his chest above the roof of my car; the deer I saw ahead of time, and there were many of them, and it took several minutes for them to all cross the road because they would stop and look at me. Its well past midnight when I get to the hotel, and the internet isn’t working because clouds block the weak signal for the satellites that supply it to the hotel. I don’t get out of bed until nearly 11AM, and it’s almost 2pm when I finally make it to the Park.
Which takes forever; my hotel is only a couple miles from the gate, but the park itself is nearly another ten miles at a slow speed. Once I do get there, I am ASTOUNDED. You see pictures and video of the Grand Canyon, but those are pale and nearly insidious representations of what is truly possibly the most amazing thing I have ever seen! My mind can barely comprehend the Canyon walls themselves, the way they overlap and their shapes and the way the rock has formed in bands. I know the process, I understand, scientifically, what the Canyon is and the why-how-when of the rock, but none of that actually matters when It is daring you to define it with your own eyes. All this on a hazy, cloudy day. I am in imagination RAPTURE: all of the stories that go through my head, from what the Native people have done that made this land sacred, to what went through the first White Man’s head when we finally caught up to them, to the divine Spirit of Exploration that sent man after man after man to this place to chart and catalog every rock and tree… I spend the whole freezing cold day there, exploring different outlooks over the canyon, until the Sun finally breaks the clouds at sunset. It was like someone set a fire inside the living Rock Itself. The glow was that of the true Gift from God, as if the Divine Above was saying “Here is where you can find me; Here is where I will hear You; Here is where I have laid my heart for you”. I cried. Like a baby. I also cursed my camera for not being able to capture what was really there, only the mockery and shell of a rock; if there was one thing I ever wanted, it is a way to visually capture what the soul look like and share it.
Once the fire has left the Rock, I turn to go. there is no vibrant display of stars this time of year, thanks to clouds that bring us snow. Once I make it back to my hotel, I wonder just how many people here have actually seen It, and what they think of the tourists that come to see It (there are a number of Japanese tourist, and a Spanish-speaking group). It kills me to leave, but I’m already leaving an hour later than I planned, and the snow is coming down again. I will, for a second time, drive out of winter and into spring.
wanderingfaery 