Editor's Letter

I was talking to Amy Martin in Bruce Aiken’s kitchen. It’s the kind of kitchen you think of when you think of a working kitchen. Well worn, like an old college sweatshirt. Perfectly aged, like a block of clothbound cheddar. It’s the central core in the modest home of a renowned artist. On that night, a cool night in September, the kitchen counters

were piled high with food, as if the Ghost of Christmas Present had made a wrong turn in Cornhill and ended up in Flagstaff. The bounty was for a milestone. Bruce was turning 70, and Amy and I were on the guest list.

We were enjoying the fresh figs and cold beer, talking about summer adventures, when I selfishly changed the subject. “I need some words, Amy. Your words. I need you to write something about the North Rim for our January issue. No other writer has a deeper connection. And the piece you wrote about losing your mom, and being in the Canyon during the pandemic, was so good. I need another one of those.”

At the time, the Dragon Bravo Fire was still burning on the Kaibab Plateau, and I was trying to figure out if there was something we could publish about the fire in our Grand Canyon issue. Subscribers were asking for a requiem. And Annette McGivney had pitched a story about the aftermath. Either of those might have worked, in time, but the hotshot crews were still up there with their Pulaskis and McLeods, fighting for containment — the denouement of the tragedy hadn’t yet been written. We needed something else. Something reflective and emotional. I knew that Amy was the writer to write it, even if she’s too humble to say so.
 

“I suffer from imposter syndrome,” she told me, suggesting that she’s somehow undeserving of the high praise she gets for her words. I just smiled. Amy’s not an imposter. Writer may not be at the top of her splash page — she’s also a photographer, scientist, river guide, humanitarian, mom — but she’s definitely a writer.

“The last remaining leaves on the Frémont cottonwood hold the sun as it slips through a notch in the canyon’s southern wall,” she wrote in that essay about her mom. “Trunks and limbs, near-naked in the chill of late afternoon, lay shadows across the footbridge and onto the sorted stones that line Bright Angel Creek. Even in the long light, these stones are boundless in color and form, collected from every geologic layer above. Water and time have reduced the facades of limestone, sandstone, shale and schist to boulder, cobble, sand and silt, all eventually settling in the cradle of the creek bed. The entire scene, from pebble to panorama, asserts nature’s artistry as creator and destroyer. There is no resisting entropy.”

She’s definitely a writer. And she’s not afraid to point her pen at a subject that feasts on anyone who tries to define its undefinable nature.

“There is a part of me that thinks that no one should write a word about the Canyon, or take a photograph or paint a picture,” Charles Bowden said. “And I believe this because the Canyon is like great music, within the reach of everyone and beyond the comprehension of anyone. We can feel it but we can never say it.”

More than once, Chuck violated his own conviction. And we’re all a little closer to the Canyon because of that — he marshaled vowels and consonants the way Mozart composed counterpoint.

“Cottonwoods strike at the sky with green buds firing from the limbs,” he wrote about his first time in the Canyon. “Stones stare up from the creek bottom: red stones, orange stones, amber, brown, black, white, rust, silver, pink, gold stones. The water dancing down the Canyon splashes, swirls, roars, thrashes, babbles, crashes, tinkles. Red drains from the sandstone walls. I have never been in the Canyon before, and I am marching with a backpack toward some dream of peace.”

Jack Foster, a wordsmith from Los Angeles, ignored the rule, too. In 1979, he penned a brilliant essay titled The Sound of Silence.

“When you walk to the edge, you’re not really ready for it,” he wrote. “It’s like snapping on a light in a dark room. Suddenly, there it is, the whole thing, all at once, bam — an enormous, jagged tear in the earth, a hole so huge you have to swing your head around to see it all. It is such a staggering sight, you expect it to do something — to rumble, to thunder, to erupt. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t stir. It doesn’t speak. It just sits there with its mouth open, swallowing sound. It just sits there in majestic silence, like some terra-cotta Buddha, listening, holding its breath, waiting for the world to end. It just sits there.”

Our editor at the time, Tom Cooper, called it “one of the finest pieces” he’d ever read. Readers agreed. “At last there is a writer that can do full justice in describing the beautiful Grand Canyon,” Christine Lynn of Gastonia, North Carolina, wrote. “Such a moving story.”

Lisa Compton-Jones of Cape Town, South Africa, liked it, as well. “On our return recently from our fourth visit to the Grand Canyon, we found your June edition awaiting us, and we are delighted with it. It really strikes a chord as it says everything I feel about the Canyon, but haven’t been able to find words to express.”

None of us have the words, but some get close. Chuck did, so many times. And so did Jack Foster, John McPhee, Terry Tempest Williams, Frank Waters, Craig Childs and Amy Martin, who eventually said yes in Bruce Aiken’s kitchen.

Thank you, Amy.

The range of human emotion runs from despair to ecstasy. Amy’s poignant essay in this issue touches so many points along that spectrum. And with her words she offers perspective, understanding and hope. Something that seemed almost impossible on that cool night back in September.