Every August or September I try to slip out of town for three or four days to kinda recharge the batteries and remind myself that I live in a really great country to just look at and visually enjoy. Usually, I end up at one of those relatively quiet and peaceful Southern California beaches just north of San Diego where I can plop down on the warm sand and put things into their proper perspective. I simply gaze out at the incoming and outgoing waves for a few hours and remind myself that those very same waves will still be coming and going long after me and all my little problems are long gone and forgotten about, and that always seems to do the trick. I think we all have a tendency to think we are much more important in the overall scheme of things than we actually are, and there’s something quite comforting in reminding myself every once in a while, that no matter who we are, when it’s our time to leave this earth, the world won’t skip a beat.
This year I decided I was finally going to go see the Grand Canyon, so my little trip was planned around that goal. First, though, I had to do my yearly “sit in the sand”, so I drove down to Laguna Beach, leisurely accomplished that, and then headed out early the next morning for Las Vegas. My “make it up as you go” plan called for me to spend the night there and since all the hotels on the strip looked pretty much the same to me (gaudy), I strolled around in the heat (106) and crowds (thousands of vacationers) for most of the afternoon before finally making a decisions on where to bed down.
Since I am now going to say a couple of negative things about where I stayed, I think it’s probably best that I don’t name the hotel/casino, but I will mention that it looks a lot like a giant black pyramid. Actually, I guess my evening wouldn’t have been all that bad if it had taken me less time to get to my room on the 17th floor and if the new coded elevator system that they apparently had just installed had actually worked. To get the darn thing to go up or down you not only had to push the button which identified the floor you wanted, but you also had to insert your room key into another slot before it would start moving. Unfortunately, as I learned later, I was one of the lucky ones with a room key that the elevator didn’t particularly like (they were working out the kinks in the system and they appreciated my patience).
Not only was I stranded inside a locked elevator all by myself, but the gods decided to play another really nasty trick on me by turning out the lights, too. So there I was, having always thought I would be so cool, calm and collected in such a situation, not able to see my hand in front of my face, much less locate a button that might read, “Push for help if beginning to panic”. So, after a few minutes of what I would consider being pretty cool, calm and collected, the air supply seemed to be rapidly disappearing and I decided to go to my Plan B, which consisted of pounding on the inside of the elevator door and screaming such things as, “Get me the hell out of this death trap!” Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the lights went back on, and the door mercifully opened and I lived to fight another day.
The next morning after quickly losing a hundred dollars or so on failed blackjack hands and slot machines and purchasing a $4 banana for breakfast, I began my day-trip to the Grand Canyon, by way of Hoover Dam, which I had always wanted to see, having watched some very interesting television programs in the past about its construction and the fact that it is the principle source of flood control, irrigation and electrical power for most of the American Southwest.
The narrow winding road which takes you down and over the dam is a visual delight in itself, with its beautiful rocky canyon walls and peaceful vistas. I also got a great view of the dam’s massive intake towers because the water level is so far down this year due to the lengthy drought that part of the country has been experiencing since around 1999.
Approximately four hours of hard driving later, I suddenly found myself on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. As much as I would like to describe that incredible moment for you, words will simply do it no justice. I’ll just say that if you haven’t had a deeply religious experience in ages, you need to get yourself to the Grand Canyon! Anyway, there I was, silly me, having always somehow thought that if I ever got myself to the Grand Canyon, all I would have to do is stroll up to the edge of it, look out, and see the whole thing. I quickly learned, however, that not only is the Grand Canyon five to six thousand feet deep in places, it is also 277 miles long, and to view it properly you need to take at least three days or so to journey from the South Rim to the North Rim because the ancient rocks that are exposed for all to see are different from place to place, some forming slopes, some cliffs, and no one view is the same. Plus, I was told that the minerals inside the rocks create different shades of reds and yellows and greens that change not only with the location but also with the time of day.
But since my time was limited, I decided some of it should be devoted to having myself another “put things into perspective sit”. And as I sat there, looking out over the majestic South Rim, only one thought was really necessary – that for 12 million years the mighty Colorado River has been relentlessly carving out the Grand Canyon. And there I was, little old unimportant me, viewing a 12-million-year old project of Mother Nature. Talk about perspective!