In the house of stone and light

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

Will Rodgers once said of the Grand Canyon: “It’s a great place to throw old razorblades”. In order to truly understand that bit of wisdom, you need to go in there and see for yourself.

In 1987, my wife and I set out down the canyon with backpacks and bottled water hanging from every conceivable spot on our bodies.

We planned very carefully for the excursion, we bought backpacks for sleeping bags and tents, we bought sleeping bags and tents! We bought new shoes for the hike and we packed all night.

Sounds good, huh? Almost like we knew what we were doing?

OK, the backpacks had no frame for the hips, so the entire weight of the things pulled down on the shoulders. They were pretty cheap - because I am too - so they never did fit quite right and I hiked down twisted, rubble strewn pathways a mile above the pit looking like Quasimodo in search of Esmeralda.

Now for the boots.

In the last decade, Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Payless have started carrying size 13, and 14. In the late 80’s size 13s were fairly hard to come by. I grabbed the only pair of strong, sturdy boots I could find in my size.

I had left Minnesota 12+ years ago, so forgive me if I was a little slow on the uptake when I bought them, but after all that time in the desert, I just didn’t recognize snow boots when I saw them any more.

The thing that makes snow boots so effective in the frozen north is they prevent air or moisture to pass through to the foot. At the top of the canyon, the temperature is in the low 80. At the bottom, it’s in the 100s. At the top of the canyon, the snow boots felt good, if a little warm. By the time I stopped for the night I would have babbled troop movements and given my CO’s home address if the enemy would have let me take the boots off. But I digress...

Going down in the canyon is breathtaking, but so is smoking a pack of cigarettes. I know - I did both – at the same time.

There are several trails down into the canyon. The most popular is Bright Angel. It’s fairly well carved out of the face of the cliffs, it’s wide enough and traveled enough that you can rent a burro and ride it down the canyon. There are others that are a little more challenging - and then there’s the trail experienced and reckless climbers and thrill-seekers attempt just to keep that competitive edge: Hermit Trail.
As neither of us had ever hiked before, nor had the faintest idea of what to do in the wilderness, that was the trail for us.

Hermit Trail goes 17 miles to the bottom of the canyon. We may have been crazy, but we weren’t stupid. We were only going to go down to the Santa Maria Springs about 4 miles away. Maybe that’s “we were stupid, but we weren’t crazy”?

The first 1½ miles dropped almost 1700 feet straight down.

All along the trail you see graffiti. I thought this was a shame until I began to notice that some of the graffiti that had been scratched into the rock bore dates in the 1800s. I was looking at a century-old defacement. I then saw beside them what the signs on the trail identified as ancient cave drawings and I had to wonder when defacement becomes an historical treasure.

I will never forget the sites as we journeyed down in to the canyon. Native Americans called the canyon the House of Stone and Light and when you travel down the depths, the reason becomes obvious. Every time we took another five steps, the canyon changed. I had seen the canyon many times from high atop the 7,000-foot cliff, but it was never the same one I saw in the midst of that hike. Each time I looked during the hike it was a different place.

There is no way to describe it; no picture can catch more than the most fleeting glimpse of it. It is one of the most soul awakening places I’ve ever seen. The very starkness and arid solidity of the Grand Canyon exudes what can only be termed “majesty”.

It’s solid rock in layers of color and reflection and contrast. We had to stop to gape and gawk, and even if I hadn’t been smoking two packs a day at the time, we still would have stopped just as often - I think.

We had plenty of food, and plenty of water, but what we ran out of was daylight. When the sun when down, not only was it too dangerous to continue hiking, but the heat left in one huge updraft and all the sweat we had collected on the way froze.

We found an outcropping and set up camp for the night. I finally was able to remove my boots and then thought that I might not be able to put them back on the next morning, as my feet were now easily a size 16.

I slept with them on and in the morning we decided that we should have started with something a little easier than Hermit Trail.

We were only a little way from the springs, but decided to go back out.

Uh huh.

Right

In the first 1½ miles, we had come down nearly 170 feet. Now we had to go back up again.

With my swollen feet.

That day I experienced my very first heat stroke.

My wife, though tired and hurting as much as I was, panicked as I sat down and contemplated spending my retirement days on the very rock beneath me. She ran the last ½ mile to get help, then came back to lead the help to me.

What she found was a hiker who was more experienced, thinner and a non-smoker. He had gone down to the springs as a day-trip. I hated him instantly. I did, however take some of his salt-tablets and with a nod to the first episode of Star-Trek and the salt sucking monster (Nancy Crater – I can’t believe I remember that!), I did manage to pull myself back up to the rim, leaning on my wife the entire time.

I celebrated my delivery from the rocky-heat-stroke-death by having a cigarette.

Yes, now that I think about it, I think it was “stupid, not crazy”.

Maybe both.