2025 Grand Canyon Thunder River (IV): Esplanade Sunset

Sunsets in the Grand Canyon:  There is nothing like them:

Imagine our surprise when we saw an object and a trail rising up in the sky!  Was this the end?  No, just a SpaceX launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

2025 Grand Canyon Thunder River (III): Trailhead To The Esplanade

 The objective of the first "day" of our hike - now that we had arrived - was to get to the Esplanade, which (as it turns out) is not just a fancy name, but a reference to the layer of rock that constitutes it, a 330 foot red sandstone shelf. Mileage was about 5 miles*: 2 miles along the Rim, then 3 miles or so of hiking down into the canyon, with an descent of about 850 ft.

(* = Author's note:  Distances in come cases may be approximate, based on measured versus reported.)

The trail along the Rim is a series of undulating hills.  At one point one reaches the high point and begins the last downhill.  In the back of my mind, of course, is that we have to come up all of this as well:  the trail in will be our trail out, at least here.

The trail down:

The sky was partially cloudy, but we were spared any significant rain.  It made for even more spectacular views though; I do not remember seeing clouds of this kind when I hiked here 3 years ago.

Monument Point.  This is a useful gauge of how for down (or up) one has come:

This was a very steep descent with a series of narrow switchbacks.  Descents for me - and for most people that I hike with - are the more difficult part of the hike.  Rocks can slip, poles can slide out, feet can slide - twisting knees and ankles or just causing one to fall. All of us went down at least once during the descent.

One of the things that struck me as I continued down was the silence.  There are no birds, no insects, no particular wind or rain in this case, just silence.  To someone that is surrounded constantly by sound, it was terribly noticeable.

Looking back up at Monument Point for perspective:

Even in the Grand Canyon, you can find flowers in Autum:

Our campsite for the night:

Sunset getting ready to put on a show:

The raised, blackened soil you see below is actually a combination of soil and bacteria called cryptosoil or cryptobiotic crusts.  It includes cyanobacteria, fungi, bacteria, and lichens, and is alive. 

And, of course, very fragile. Step lightly.

Dinner this night was pizzadillas (basically quesadillas with pizza makings).  Sadly, I failed to grab a picture.

But the view on the veranda while waiting for dinner was amazing.

Resonance That Awakens The Before

Practicing the harp for my upcoming "performance" has been good for my soul.

Part of the goodness has simply been that practicing for an objective is always easier than just practicing, at least for me.  Knowing I am going to be playing in front of someone will tend to do that for me.

It has also been good as a general re-introduction to not only the harp on a more regular basis, but a re-examination of my life in general.  And especially those things which, for whatever reason, I have put to the side.

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There was a time - years and years ago - when my life was very different, with a lot more music and singing and learning and reading of some less than serious things, tinged with a very strong streak of hopeless romanticism.

It is easy to look and say "Well, of course things had to change:  after all, we have to grow older and take on responsibility and so forth."  But looking back on that, I wonder if that is as true as it was presented.

For example, I have well over 25 years in my current industry.  95% to 99% of the work that I did - the products worked on, the projects worked on - have been placed into bankers boxes and are located at long term storage facilities, where they are slowly been shredded per a pre-established time frames (the modern version of this, of course, is that everything is now electronically stored and deleted according to the same time frames).  A 99% failure rate is not the sort of thing that shouts  "Good investment of time".

I then look at the things I gave up to do this, the person I had to become in order to do these things - and wonder if the present me is the better for them.

Does that mean everything else that happened in those years was also an effective failure?  Not at all. Lots of very fine things happened during those times as well.  I made new friends, had a family, took up new practices (including writing a blog), and had experiences that I would have never likely had otherwise.

But now I am entering a different phase of my life.  And am starting to ask questions.

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The reality is that - for the first time in a very long time - I have the ability to choose a life again.  Maybe not completely all over again, but I have a great deal of freedom that I have not had in years - not just in what I do, but who I am.

And I as I pluck away at the strings of my harp, working to embed the songs into my brain, I find the resonance of the notes awakening other things as well, the faintest sounds of someone who used to be awakening for the first time in years.

A Year Of Humility (XVIIIL): Millstone

 "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depths of the sea." - Matthew 18:6

"Therefore, if food make my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble." - 1 Corinthians 8:13

Among the many things which may constitute a review of our lives when we die, I cannot help but wonder if one of those things will be those times we acted to drive people away from Christ instead of drawing them to him.

At least for myself, how many times have I acted as a millstone for someone else?  How many time times have I brought others to sin by my own?

My attitude, my self righteousness, my hurling of Biblical truths without Biblical love - how many have I turned from Christ or made Him a person without credibility to do what I say He had done, change one's life?  After all, He apparently scarcely changed my own?

Sometimes the greatest obstacle to someone else's belief in Christ is not themselves.  Sometimes it is those that claim His name.

Of Disappearing Pennies

One of the habits that our youngest, Nighean Dhonn, acquired from an early age was the collection of pressed pennies. For those that may not be aware, a pressed penny  (also known as an elongated penny or smashed penny) is a penny which is placed into a machine, run through a series of gears and presses, converted into a souvenir of a particular location.  I cannot quite remember when she first started collecting them, but over the years she has gotten them at many places that we have visited - or, others have gotten them for her.

(Source)

Somewhat to my surprise, these have a much longer history that I would have anticipated, first appearing in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, IL.

As a reliable father, I have taken to carrying to makings of an elongated penny - a penny and two to four quarters - on my person just in case, because you never know.  That emergency stash was used in her recent visit to New Home 2.0 (Two points to the home team).

Thus it was with a bit of trepidation that I heard, earlier this year, that pennies are being discontinued.

As a potential gift, I suggested to The Ravishing Mrs. TB that she get a roll of pennies to give Nighean Dhonn for Christmas (along with a roll of quarters).  She went to the bank - and got the last roll they had.  Apparently, they can no longer order pennies.  They will only have them if someone turns them in.

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It is hard for me to imagine a world without pennies.

Yes, of course I understand that a penny now is not what a penny was when I was young.  But pennies were the sort of ubiquitous coin that always seemed to be present.  The idea of finding a "lucky penny" buoyed my spirits up more than once as I crossed a parking lot or found one in a store (it still does, honestly).  

Pennies, for me, served as a gauge of how much things had increased in cost since "the old days":  how many times did I read of the late 19th or early 20th century where a penny would buy any number of things.  It served as a tangible link to finance of the past.

And now, it appears, it will in turn become a thing of the past.

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Like most coins, they will not immediately disappear.  They will still be roaming in the population. For now, people will still use them. And then stores will stop price things in such a way that they have to use pennies (this is going to be an issue for sales tax, of course).  And slowly they will slip out of circulation, into the hands of those that use them for other things or collect them, because they will have no use as currency.

I suppose it is ridiculous to get sentimental about the loss of use of a coin - after all, it is not like I use cash all that much anymore.  Perhaps my sentimentality derives from the fact that another thing which figured so much into my past and my understanding of the world is slowly slipping away out of use.

It does sadden me a bit that younger generations will not get the thrill of randomly found penny on the ground.  But - sadly - perhaps we now live in a world beyond such simple pleasures.

Or at least, most of us.  I will still continue to look for them and be filled with joy when I find one.

2025 Grand Canyon Thunder River (II): To The Trailhead!

After about 4 hours on the road, we turned East to get to the Canyon.  We took a longer route there as our guide, Rainbow Bright, was concerned that with the recent rains and the fires, the van would get stuck in the mud (it had happened once before).

One thing I always forget about the Grand Canyon is that the Rim is almost 7,000-8,000 ft/2130-2430 m above sea level - so to go down, one first has to go up.

Evidence of the fire.  Sadly, like the burns we saw in the Sierras going to Mt. Whitney in 2022, these will not regrow in my lifetime.

Eventually we left the burn zone and heading into what the area had looked like before the fire.

First view of the Canyon!

The Bill Hall Trailhead.  Leaving a little after noon, we start down  

As a note, we had refilled our water at a stop midway in the mountains; we will not be able to refill our water until mid-day tomorrow when we arrive at Thunder Falls.

The Collapse CCXIV: Ad Astra

 28 December 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

This afternoon as I was puttering around the house one of my science fiction books caught me eye.

It was one of those “military” science fiction books by one of the authors that I had come to enjoy (before the genre morphed beyond my ability to enjoy it). Starships, foreign worlds, the interplay of humanity in the future with all of the issues that are timeless because we are human. One of those authors who wrote science fiction when it was at its best.

I have many happy memories of reading books like that, of reaching out via space or magic to realms that were clearly unattainable but in some ways were far more real to me than the world that I was living.

I looked at cover, chuckled fondly, and put it back.

Our “science fiction future” has turned out quite different, it seems (Yes, I know, many authors wrote in some kind of mass apocalypse which humanity was able to push back from. I have no idea what the situation is outside of our bubble, but I suspect we are a ways from “the long march back”.).

One of the things that the best sorts of science fiction were infused with was a sort of underlying hope and optimism. Yes, part of that was likely due to the fact that authors wanted to sell books (who wants to read a book where everyone dies in the end), but it also reflected a belief at some level that hope matters, that good triumphs, that justice prevails. That seemed to change over time as the walls of the universe and technology closed in and travel “out there” became much less of a “Can we make it to the next star?” to “Can we make it to the next planet, or maybe even the moon?” Even those things would be amazing; for many that were raised on new worlds and new dimensions, “the next planet over” might seem a bit like settling.

Could I pick up that book, or any one of the other science fiction and fantasy books and read them today? Yes, without question: The books I have kept are the books that I enjoyed and that entertained me not specifically reliant on the setting or the technology/magic but rather about the relationships and the characters. In that sense, they are as great a literature to me as anything considered a “classic”.

But could I look to them as I did once as worlds more real? Sadly, no. That door has closed; possibly it has closed for all humanity at this point. The real world sputters in my stove with a minimum of wood or bends the bushes and trees as a cold wind that we can no longer predict days ahead, only endure.

I wonder if, out of all of this, a new sort of literature will be created based not so much one what we thought could have been possible, but what we actually learned from the experience.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2025 Grand Canyon Thunder River (I): Flagstaff, Navajo Bridge, Vermillion Cliffs

 This hike almost did not happen.

Up to approximately 3 weeks before, the fire in the North Rim of the Grand Canyon meant that the North Rim was closed.  The company we went with had planned a route out of the South Rim just in case (which would have been fine, of course) - but three weeks out the North Rim reopened.

(The only picture I grabbed from Flagstaff)

The start of every hike - whether in the meeting place or at the trailhead - consists of a pack check, where our guide or guides see what you are bringing to make sure that it is not too much and that you are not missing anything too critical.  Our guide for the hike, a 5'2" woman with the trail name Rainbow Bright (who for the record out hiked, out carried, and out prepared all of us), went through each of our piles of stuff.  I felt pretty good that nothing I had got culled (although she did ask after the book I was bringing - Did I read every day?) and I had to buy one item (a cheap plastic rain poncho from The Mart of Wal, mostly because they are pretty weightless).

The next morning we rose early and met with our guide and the other members of our group:  3 gentlemen from Pennsylvania and a gentleman (also a Brit, as it turned out) currently living in CA.  3 more pack checks and we were off.

The drive to the North Rim starting from Flagstaff is a pleasant one to begin with; the scenery is that of Alpine region with meadows and stands of pine trees (One of those places I think "I should come back and visit here sometime).  But at some point - about an hour or so in - the scenery begins to change into the treeless, windblown, rocky terrain of a desert.

Deserts that are unoccupied are beautiful.  Deserts that are lived tend to be less desirable to me than other sorts of lived in environments as there is nothing to conceal or hide the starkness of human human habitation.

As you can tell, we had elements of rain and clouds as we drove.  It made for some very beautiful views, the desert and clouds - something which I do not think I have seen.

Our first sight of the Colorado River:

Navajo Bridge.  The original bridge (to the left) was originally completed in 1929 and was the first bridged crossing of the Colorado, replacing the ferry at Lee's Ferry which was located 6 miles East and was (since 1873) the only place the Colorado could be crossed for hundreds of miles.

The original bridge was replaced in 1995 by a new bridge.  The original construction crew had done their job so well that the cleared points left behind from 1927-1929 were used as the base for the ne Bridge.

The Vermillion Cliffs, a relatively new (2000) National Monument.  It is approximately 294,000 square acres.