Kamp KOA, Part II

We had been waiting for this day for a few years, at this point. Our trip to the Grand Canyon!

The first time we visited, we entered from the eastern gates of the South Rim. When we had left from the western gates, there was a line of cars snaking its way from the gates for what must have been at least a mile, so we made sure to not try and enter from the western side.

So that's my one tip for visiting the Grand Canyon: you'll very very very likely not face any lines to enter if you go through the eastern gate - just make sure you're entering before 9am!

The Desert View Watchtower is a must-stop! The views are breathtaking. No pictures will ever live up to seeing - experiencing - the Grand Canyon in all its splendor! It truly must be seen to be appreciated; to be known.

The word "awesome" was invented for this place.

The watchtower is, importantly, a place kids will love. There's enough running around, exploring opportunities for them to get their wiggles out after being crammed in the car for such a long time.

Look at me: sounding like a mommy blogger.

Sometimes - sometimes - words really do fail me. I find it difficult to translate what I saw, felt, heard, smelled, and experienced at a place and time into easily understood words and phrases.

And this is one of those times.

I am often reminded of what David Foster Wallace said:

"How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it's just words."

That's a quote that - ahem - as a writer, really resonates with me. It is odd to plough the depths of my heart and mind and bring out a seemingly limitless combination of 26 letters that can examine the human experience; its beautiful spirit.

I feel it's a combination of both words and pictures failing to really convey what one experiences at the Grand Canyon. So I'm a double failure.

cool cool cool

And looking back, maybe I was having an existential crisis. I don't know. But there's this... diminishing? A shrinking of oneself? Maybe ego death?

Ok, maybe not ego death, but... something that probably flirted with it. Made goo goo eyes at it.

Beyond the oohs and ahhs, when gazing into the abyss it wasn't the abyss gazing back into me, but nature saying, "You really are nothing. And to nothing you'll eventually return."

I'm but a single grain of sand. My existence, at the cosmological scale, begins and ends in the time it takes for one's eyes to start to blink.

It's what my nephew would say: fooky (spooky)

But, for me, that kind of reminder of insignificance makes me feel more human. And maybe that's why I find myself yearning for nature when I've been gone from it for too long. My self-importance becomes inflated. My ego gets in my own way.

So I take a stroll under the trees and am once again made aware that just as much as nature is indifferent to the singular speck of pollen floating on the breeze, so do I play such an insignificant role.

And I come back with a sunburn; covered in dust and dried sweat and dirt under my chewed-up fingernails and I think, "How can I make me - this speck of pollen - leave its mark upon this universe? How can I make this all worthwhile?"

While I have those thoughts, I also want to confess that I'm not inspired towards grand achievements. I am fine - and desire - a quiet, modest life. I am fine practicing my art; taking my silly little pictures and playing my silly little guitar and writing my silly little words (let's not call them stories... yet). I'm not chasing after a fucking buck (even though I need a few of them just to live).

I'm chasing after me giving me significance. And I think I'm doing a pretty good job at it.

I guess I'm finding myself far more introspective than articulate, at the moment. My mind is not ill at ease, though. There's this tension, almost. Like my thoughts and feelings aren't aligning; that thoughts of my life being so trivial on a universal scale should induce me with panic, but I feel a calm that can only come from being confronted with my being but a spec of dust - not considered or impactful in any way.

But that's reminiscing about the Grand Canyon does to me.

That's what thinking about Shoshone Point does to me.

I don't know if ever before a place has impacted me in such a way.

The vista the expanded beyond the horizon. Seeing something that took millions upon millions of years to take shape and yet I, in that very moment of time, am able to behold with my eyes.

I was called and pulled to the edge. The breeze and the sounds that no-noise (do you know what I mean? That... empty sound you hear when there's no real sound to actually hear?) creates was like a siren's song.

"Just take another step closer. You'll be fine. Look... respectfully."

I admit: I was afraid to get so close.

I don't - and didn't - have a fucking death wish. So it's not anything like that. Please don't misunderstand.

But... the call...

The view was limitless.

In The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, the characters have difficulty describing their own threat to their existence, The Nothing: it's not a black void, because that's something. It's not grey, it's not shiny, it's not... something. Every way in which to explain it leads to you imagining or picturing something. Whereas it's nothing.

That's how I feel about explaining what came over me while at Shoshone Point.

I think it was so deeply personal and deeply felt that it would be impossible to explain in such a way that you, Reader, would be able to understand my perspective.

Though I could share my words about the experience, you would bring your own experiences and your own images into the explanation in order to more or less fill in the blanks. But that's not something I'm willing to have happen in order to help you understand what I felt while I was at this place.

In the song Disintegration by The Cure, Robert Smith sings/cries out:

"It's easier for me to get closer to heaven
Than ever feel whole again"

In its own confusing way, being closer to the earth - not heaven - makes me feel whole again.

But maybe nature is heaven. And when we ascend to heaven after death, it's really just a rejoining into the earth.

That's what came over me to the point where I was overcome: a sense of oneness; a satisfying completeness and connection with... everything? Myself? My wife?

Like it was just... perfect.

It was just Father Sky, Mother Earth, and your dear old Uncle Tony.

We did so much at the Grand Canyon and it really was such a special, wonderful day. There's so many pictures to share, but I can't post them all.

But, stick a slice of pizza in my face and all those existential, philosophical thoughts melt away and I'm just a fatso weirdo, once again.

Not so bad, right?

Until next time!