MEMOIR
That Time I Nearly Became a Grand Canyon Legend
Don’t mess with Zeus
It’s true what they say about the Grand Canyon. But beyond being grand, it’s a landscape so vast that it truly raises questions. Its towering mountains, gaping plateaus and sheer cliffs each seem to belong to a world untouched by man. To this day, it’s hard for me to imagine that human feet have ever touched down on more than a few piddly percentage points of the canyon that sprawls out as far as the eye can see.
How many Native Americans and explorers must have come across this forbidding landscape and put their face to their palms in utter defeat? Even considering that there were once people tasked with crossing those colossal chasms takes an olympian feat of imagination.
But luckily, it was in the 21st century that my family and I stumbled onto the Grand Canyon. Unluckily, it was still before the advent of smartphones with 4K cameras, but alas. I could listen to the music on my iPhone 4 with my pre-bluetooth headphones as my parents tried to make sense of the lumbering GPS module that teetered across the dashboard of our rental car. At those altitudes, though, connections were spotty.
“I still think you missed the turn,” my mom pointed out for the fifth time.
