National Park Service White Sands U.S. Department of the Interior White Sands National Monument Lost and Found in the Grand Canyon By Ron McNeel, Volunteer Intepretive Park Ranger

hen I first heard about the NPS I am Arizona born and raised. The WCentennial campaign to FIND Grand Canyon is the state’s pride. YOUR PARK, I was dubious about I went to college in Flagstaff at the slogan. Don’t we keep looking Northern Arizona University. As for the next park, and the next, while an undergraduate, with outdoorsy hoarding memories of those we’ve college buddies, I hiked into the already driven through, walked in, canyon four times down four different saddled up for, paddled down? In routes. The first trip took me down fact, bagged? the main Kaibab Trail, across the And the national parks are treasured Black Bridge to Phantom Ranch, and as public lands. How does the then back across the Silver Bridge, over the Colorado River, up the Bright possessive “your” figure in? Angel Trail. What names! Maybe it does in a newly nostalgic story like mine. I serendipitously On this raft trip, I would get to sail found a replacement slot on a raft under those same hand-crafted trip down the Colorado River bridges, built only for hikers and through the Grand Canyon. When mules. But on the trip’s first day, the I heard, in May, of an opening on rapid at Badger Creek would bounce an early July excursion, I snatched and bob me past the campsite of my at the chance. The trip was with a second hike. That hike wound down national organization of scientists and Jackass Canyon to the upper Marble educators who promote evolutionary Canyon portion of the Grand. In our theory and the story of a four billion college guidebook, it was considered year-old earth. Not exactly my an “easy in”—easy except where the tribe, since my career had been in helping steel cable was frayed! But the humanities, professing rhetoric we young men helped one another and English literature. But I thought in and out of the park. One of those to fit in well enough—just another companions is now gone. academic pedant. Also, another Far below Phantom Ranch and its journal-keeper—but not so dedicated hikers’ bridges, our rafting excursion as some biologists and geologists. My planned to stop at Havasu Creek. I account became sketchy, however, as never made it down to the river when, I recorded 230 river miles of thoughts all those years ago, we hiked into on waterproof paper with ordinary Havasupai to see its famous turquoise ink. falls: Navajo, Havasu, and Mooney. My own story and connection to One of those hiking buddies is now the Grand Canyon goes way back. gone, too. Finally, near the end of our raft trip, journey. The canyon, in my mind’s the towering runes on temple walls, we would navigate the challenge of map, travels east to west. In fact, the they are forever lost, only to be felt in Lava Falls Rapids: rated 10+ on a scale canyon, for some profound geologic the forgotten language that overcomes of 10. I had hiked down with college reason, meanders where a river the heart of small creatures on puny buddies from the north rim to camp faced with so much rock should not rafts. next to this rapid’s roar so many years meander. By just the second day, I Reveries like these would burst in the ago. And, two of those friends are could not determine the cardinal immediacy of thrilling cold rapids. An now gone. People, loved ones, pass directions as the river twisted south even starker reminder of the present: on, in the great river of time. for a long stretch, then back on itself a rock slide in morning camp of the north. Even in the mornings, waking But it turns out that I had found my seventh day, when boulders allowed up with the sun, I couldn’t find east, park, back in my days as an Arizona about 1,400 feet of air to decide their for the sun would light only the high kid and a college adventurer. Here, at beach landing craters. One person rock rims of its own choosing, or light 62 years of age, was the opportunity grazed, one pontoon punctured, and the walls allowed by some twist in to find my park again, to find those we were ready sail on, to leave our the canyon space. Sunset brought the canyon places that remain special in park. same disorientation. The sun would my own little history. paint the golds and reds of ledges But when I mentioned learning how But you don’t just find your park. You thousands of feet up, in slow motion to leave one’s Park, I didn’t mean have to also get lost in your park. And fireworks. But it would not reveal its out of terror—though there were ten you have to learn how to leave your western resting place. For direction, seconds there . . . . I meant leaving with awe and respect for the place, for park. there was only up river, and down. the Grand Canyon, cemented in the And we were going down. As expected, I shared with my rafting fiber of one’s being. My park, Grand companions some of the common My often talkative companions would Canyon, elevates one’s view to light root language of academics—even if also find, at times, our silence to get and color, cloud and sky, elemental our dialects and objects of attention lost in. In quiet waters we could stand stone--and then the gaze returns to sometimes differed. They proved on the raft, look up, and see the work an immediate roaring river channel. to be good campers: quick to help of eons of wind and water in endless In two glances, you take in as much unload, quick to pack up for the towering rock, and even the relatively of the eternal, and as much of the next day’s thirty river miles or so. recent work (geologically speaking) moment, as is humanly possible. And, they abided with good grace my of the fires of the earth, uplifting Parks can change you. personal history and nostalgia--as I continents and dumping boiling lava abided their faint fossil records and into the canyon. That young curmudgeon Henry molecular details of 1.8 billion years David Thoreau is not always easy But I got lost--in my own to follow. Just what did he mean of geology made gloriously visible. imagination—in the monuments when he said, “In wildness is the But I was here to find my spirit, carved on rim faces left by the preservation of the world”? In large restored by nature. And maybe find ancient kings of civilizations of measure, he meant, take some deep the youth I’d lost. Even, to aspire to a demi-gods. Those rock walls seemed breaths of clear air on that river or new kind of lost. to be the product of thousands of trail you journey down, and know mighty hammers wielded by titanic that, if you leave it wild, our young At our college campsites and trails masons— time-smoothed bas-relief used so long ago, at Jackass Canyon Americans can find what they need of noble faces disappearing into the to clear their minds and renew their and at Phantom Ranch and at Lava crenellated ramparts. Maybe some Falls, I could envision us again as spirits for the unknown struggles of the carvings were from alien they will confront. We can leave them young men and women. The places settlements, colonies long evacuated endure--after floods and droughts good odds to prevail. So find your to home stars, perhaps, but not park, and leave it too. and invasions of Salt Cedar trees--as departed out of boredom at this touchstones to youthful expeditions planet’s potential. Swirling around that were not at all drunken nor all the faces of gallant knights and lecherous. We—I—had connected star-warriors, I imagined circles and with that amazing landscape of stone, arcs from the gods of the continents’ cut by water, filled by sky. Now I was native peoples, fainter carvings of the immersed again in a landscape of creatures of sky and river and rocky dreams of a never-known home as the ledge. None of these markings were canyon’s chronicler, Ed Abbey might meant to communicate to us any say. specific tales or moral messages. Or, if But I was also lost on the new there were heroic sagas embedded in revised 11_29_16