Grand Canyon A Study in Moods

GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon of Arizona, carved by time and the river, is a masterpiece of changing personalities, a study in moods. It is all colors, and no color. It is all shadow, and no shadow. It is all sweetness and light; it is all grimness and darkness.

It reflects all the temperamental whims of fitful weather. It mirrors the slow movement of the passing sun and the slightest cloud can change its demeanor. Each season leaves its mark on canyon walls, each hour of the day etches new patterns in canyon depths.

You cannot say, "I have seen the Grand Canyon!" unless your home is on the canyon rim and the canyon is with you and about you all the time. The canyon isn't just rock and sandstone and granite, an inert mass of graceful spires and temples clawed in the earth by a red. mad river. The Grand Canyon is a living thing, always changing. It is never the same, and when it casts its spell upon you it is with you forever.

Yet no matter how many times you have seen the canyon, it becomes the same adventure each succeeding visit. It lives in your memory not as something real and actual but as a misty thing, like a pleasant dream. It is too big for memory, too big for a mind's eye. So when you come upon it again and again it still is a new thing, a new experience. That's the Grand Canyon.

A Study in Moods

Puny are the efforts of the artist to catch on timeless canvas the timeless beauty of the canyon. The greatest work of art cannot catch the moody majesty of the canyon, its brooding, unfathomable silences, the many sides of its personality. You look at the canyon not with the eye but with the heart. You understand it not with the mind but with the soul.

No paint pot has the richness or the color to match the color of the canyon, nor any painter the sublime brush to smear on canvas the delicacy and exquisite detail which makes the canyon the masterpiece that it is. When you duel the gods you don't use a pen knife or a whisk broom.

No! the canyon is too big a job for the artist. Man always tries to account for everything, to explain it away in glib terms. But the canyon escapes the painter. The scientist, mouthing his knowing words, his head packed with the wisdom of a few years of learning, sounds like a parrot. You cannot explain away millions of years and ages beyond our ken or count with a few scientific phrases. You might try but you won't sound convincing. The musician might someday describe the canyon, or the poet might, also. The golden notes or the golden words some day might make you understand the canyon. But must we describe it? Why not leave it alone to its gloomy or merry secrets, whatever its mood may be? Then we can steal in upon it occasionally and while we may never share its secret, we can be happy knowing of its secrets, and knowing that when we return again and again, the canyon will be there as before, holding within itself its same old secrets. R. C.