Significant Grandness

Yesterday John and Marie and I made a pilgrimage to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. None of us had never been there before, so we felt a proper day of homage was necessary. It began with a stop at Cameron Trading Post north of Flagstaff on Highway 89, based on a tip John had gotten in Utah. I have seen quite a few native arts stores but this one (I have to admit) was the best I have ever seen. To think that I have passed it by well onto fifty times in my travels hither and yon, thinking it was just a tourist trap/gas station. WOW! Great stuff to see (museum quality) and buy. It's now on the 'must stop' list. Above is a sketch of John driving up there and Marie in the other front seat.

Arrive at the East Entrance of the Park and we're a bit let down. Very few overlooks and the rim road is hemmed in on both side by dense pinon pine forest. (Is this Maine or Arizona?) No views! Except at overlooks overrun with German and Japanese tourists. Then --- gosh. We stopped at Desert View overlook, the one with the faux Watchtower, and we could clearly see the Colorado below. I felt a peculiar tightness in my chest -- which was (I decided) a remnant or a memory of the fear and anticipation from thirty years ago --> when we assembled outside of Page, on the shoreline of the river, at Lee's Ferry just above Marble Canyon, and got ready to launch the 2nd River Trip. Sanderson River Expeditions. Back in the 70's, a million years ago, but the sensations were vivid.

In any event, I sketched the view of the green-watered river from that overlook:
And wrote a bit about what I was feeling/reliving. It was exciting, the remembering, And presto --> all the yammering tourists disappeared.

We three had a nice picnic (sort of, given the bee the size of a hat that was hanging around and the fact that the picnic table was so tilted on the slope that no bottle on it could stay upright --- the future 'Legend of How the the Picnic Table got to the bottom of the Grand Canyon') and then went on to a few other overlooks, To jostle other tourists. ("Entschuldigung." "Vielen dank!")

But then finally got to the El Tover Hotel overlook area at about 4pm. Hey, wait!! LOVELY!!! And few folks there! I am going back on Wednesday to spend the night there (don't even ask how much the rooms cost) and to sketch again. Below is my fav of what I sketched from that walk area yesterday and what follows it is a quote (to go with it -- to engender suitable humility) from the current show at the Museum of Northern Arizona entitled 'Grand Canyon Grandeur':
"I struggle in mad haste to utilize the moment but ah! How futile! How hopeless! What a wretched makeshift these paltry pigments! How hopeless to attempt. What inconceivable impudence to dream of imitating anything so ineffable! It challenges man’s utmost skills. It mocks and defies his puny efforts to grasp and perpetuate, through art, its ineffable grandeurs." William Robinson Leigh at the Grand Canyon, 1929.