The Perfect Foam

How Grand

I apologize for my absence, as I was driving west across the country to San Francisco, where I have decided to move with my girlfriend. The highlight of this 4,000 mile trek (thankfully my non-hybrid Honda Civic averaged about 37 miles per gallon!) was the Grand Canyon.

The drive alone from Denver, though the Rockies, and then through Utah was stunning. Utah seemingly should just be designated as one big national park. All we managed to do for the 11 or so hours of driving was stare out of the car windows, with dazed expressions on our faces. And the words incredible, stunning, amazing, and unreal kept circulating between us. Conversations consisted of the following with some variation in form:

My Girlfriend: “This is incredible.”

Me: “Unreal.”

And so went our incredibly diverse and creative use of the English language!

We decided to visit the North Rim of the Canyon, as opposed to the South Rim for the main reason that it only gets about 10 percent of the visitors that the South Rim does. And it’s on average 5-10 degrees cooler than the South Rim, making it more pleasant and easier to hike. Compared to the hordes of tourists we experienced at Mt. Rushmore (I felt like I had been transported to an ant mound), this was heaven. I thoroughly recommend to anyone to visit the North Rim, and stay at its one lodge- the Grand Canyon Lodge.

We arrived at night, so there was no Canyon sighting, and it was extremely odd to look out over the horizon, knowing that there was an incredibly large hole in the ground in front of us! We checked into our cabin, and passed out from a long, exhausting day of driving. We woke up the next day, and upon getting my first view of the Canyon, I realized that of all the words my girlfriend and I had kept repeating the previous day, none even came close to describing what we were now seeing. And so I turn to my journal once again, in an attempt to recapture the feeling I had:

“I still couldn’t get over the feeling that the Canyon was really there- that it wasn’t simply painted on a humongous canvas, stretching for miles on end… I don’t care who you are, where you are from, what you do, or what your interests are, if you aren’t impressed by the Canyon then you can’t be human! It really had a calming effect on me and there is no other way to describe looking at it but that it induced a peaceful feeling.”

I think I will have to leave the description of my experience at that. There is simply no better, or more elegant way that I can think of. As opposed to enjoying the little details in life that make up the perfect foam, this is one of those experiences that doesn’t come along every day, and it is a huge reminder of how incredible our natural world is. If we can garner even the tiniest fraction of enjoyment from our daily experiences that we can receive from this majestic place, then we will have a lot less to complain about.