Timeless land

This story starts a long time ago, as we we count time. It starts when I was a little girl and on my way to California with an intrepid great aunt and a somewhat austere governess. Somewhere in Arizona there was a wreck ahead of us and we were delayed for two or three days, which we spent at the Grand Canyon. I remember nothing except the Canyon. I do not recall how we got there or where we stayed, although I believe that my great aunt took the mule trip down and left me indignant on the Rim with the governess. I have, however, remembered the Canyon itself all these long, crowded years; and recently, four decades later, I returned to the Canyon. The trip was made possible by the fact that a friend was driving there upon official business and I shall be grateful, for another four decades, for this priceless opportunity. We left early in the morning and our route took us through the peace and beauty of Prescott, trimmed with ermine under its towering trees, and the extraordinary community of Jerome, perilously perched along its mountain streets, looking rather like the pictures one sees of mountain settlements in Italy and not at all like the United States. The effect is that of a crazy quilt of many colors hung upon an almost perpendicular clothes line. It is a sight that no one coming to Arizona should miss because it is, I believe, unique. Our road lay through Oak Creek Canyon-and was unforgettable. Driving through this canyon is to become a part of it; to feel an intimacy with it. The tinted walls rise all around you, the creek goes boiling and bubbling on its way, the trees are tall and straight. the blue sky high and gentle. Oak Creek has, to me, a most singular beauty. I have heard it compared to the Grand Canyon but such a comparison is invidious. Oak Creek is like a jewel you may hold in your hand and examine at your leisure; the Grand Canyon however close you are to it is, in its immensities, as distant as a star. Star or jewel-each has its own particular integral beauty, its special and treasurable appeal. Our trip was made late in March, so from Prescott on we encountered lazy little snow flurries, seemingly aimless, starting from heaven knew where. going their own indifferent ways. The roads were clear and fine and the snow disturbed us not at all. It was like the trick of a magician-snow and a gray sky, and then blue sky and the shining sun. We had our glimpse of the Painted Desert, the colors spilled and glowing. We had our frequent views of the San Francisco Peaks reaching up into heaven and crowned with the dazzling snow. Everywhere we looked there was some unusual loveliness to gratify the eyes and make the heart ache with wonder. The snow increased as we entered Grand Canyon National Park itself. We saw the hogans huddled against the earth, almost a part of the earth itself, smoke rising from some of them. We saw a Navajo squaw on horseback, jogging along lonely and quiet, her blanket wrapped around her, her long skirts flowing. She wore, 1 daresay, as many of these skirts as I have fingers on my hands. Un wrap or unpeel her and I am sure she would have been bee a little old woman; but in her many colored, multitudinous garments she carried plenty of authority. We stopped at Desert View and walked through the snow, which was now quite deep, to the Watch Tower. It was temporarily closed and as we stood on the Rim and looked into the Canyon we could see the storm which filled it, like an animal approaching, dark and stealthy, and without sound. We could not see to the North Rim, yet far away a shaft of sudden sunlight struck the Painted Desert and one small patch of clear, bright rose and gold emerged. It was worth the path through the snow and the bitter wind in faces accustomed to desert sun to see just that.

The rest of the trip was as wonderful, with the snow white under the pines and the birds flying across the road, the crested jays screaming as they flew. They were less unpredictable than the two golden horses we encountered before we reached the Watch Tower, a big horse and a half grown one, darting out without warning, beautiful, free and a little terrifying.

We reached our hotel just in time to wash and change and dine. It was warm with log fires and central heating, with hospitality and friendliness. Our rooms overlooked the Canyon and we felt as if we were to sleep that night upon the very edge of eternity.

The Hopi boys who carried our bags were colorful, with their silver belted tunics and the red scarves bound around their black heads. The dining room was filled with family parties, soldiers on leave. WACS and honeymooners. Dinner was most welcome and we found that unscheduled entertainment had been provided for us, for a ring tailed cat lives somewhere near the hotel, in a hole in the ground, and for three years she has been taking her meals on the American plan, as it were, in the dining room. She comes in some secret way, creeps up between the walls and emerges high up in the rafters. She comes down as far as the bracket upon which lights are set, not disturbing the beautiful plates displayed on a shelf against the wall. Once up on the bracket she is fed with cake and other sweets from the hands of the charming lady who manages the dining room. When her kittens are large enough she will, we were told, bring them there too, but not so far down. She will keep them waiting until she has had dessert and then she will feed them. If they grow impatient and howl she will smack them, as any mother would, in a disciplinary mood. We learned too that the ringed tailed cat is a member of the raccoon family and is sometimes called the Miners' cat, as the old prospectors used to trap.

The Hopi boys who carried our bags were colorful, with their silver belted tunics and the red scarves bound around their black heads. The dining room was filled with family parties, soldiers on leave. WACS and honeymooners. Dinner was most welcome and we found that unscheduled entertainment had been provided for us, for a ring tailed cat lives somewhere near the hotel, in a hole in the ground, and for three years she has been taking her meals on the American plan, as it were, in the dining room. She comes in some secret way, creeps up between the walls and emerges high up in the rafters. She comes down as far as the bracket upon which lights are set, not disturbing the beautiful plates displayed on a shelf against the wall. Once up on the bracket she is fed with cake and other sweets from the hands of the charming lady who manages the dining room. When her kittens are large enough she will, we were told, bring them there too, but not so far down. She will keep them waiting until she has had dessert and then she will feed them. If they grow impatient and howl she will smack them, as any mother would, in a disciplinary mood. We learned too that the ringed tailed cat is a member of the raccoon family and is sometimes called the Miners' cat, as the old prospectors used to trap.

to tame and use them as sleek family mousers around the camps. At all events she has a ringed tail and a quaint little fox face and we liked her very much.

That night we talked to Dr. H. C. Bryant, Superintendent of the Park, who arranged that next day we accompany his assistant, Mr. John Davis, upon a road inspection of the Park. And then, sleepy from the change in altitude, we went to bed upon the Canyon's brink.

The morning was fair and sunrise struck at the walls of the Canyon like a sword blade of light. Our rooms faced north and west and one Canyon wall was rosy and brilliant in the glow while all else that we could see was still shadowed and dreaming.

After breakfast we went to see the mules start on their trip below. I was sorry that, first, we had not time to make the trip and second, that my acquaintance with mules and even horses is so slight and so very respectful that I doubt very much if I could be, at my age, induced to take to the trail. We stood at the head of it and looked down at the first turn and down again to the trail winding like a little ribbon.

During the day we were to see Bright Angel trail again, many times; and the Kaibab trail as well. I took no notes so I have no idea of when we stood on Lipan Point or when we again reached the Watch Tower; but these things we did. We saw the Canyon from Desert View, now clear and bright in the sunlight, with no storm filling the Canyon like vapor. We saw it from the spectacu

Yaqui Point

lar point known as the Abyss, from Yakai Point and Hermit's Rest. We stopped innumerable times and left the car and went to the Rim and looked and looked. It is like drinking beauty and space and time a heady and dangerous draught.

There are no words with which to describe this grandeur. To see it is, at one and the same time, an intoxication and a religious experience. From each point the view changes, the shapes are different; they alter under light and shade. There are temples and towers and sheer terrifying cliffs. There are amphitheatres and plateaus; there are mountains, the tops sliced flat as by a knife. Across we saw the North Rim and the snow storms over it-storms which did not reach us. At one point the sun glittered on the windows of the North Rim Lodge, closed in winter. Over there we knew were the tall forests of pine and aspen, the white tailed squirrels, the fir and spruce. Higher than the South Rim the North Rim towers, shrouded in in snow and silence.

Looking down from our side at the various points we could see the Colorado River, yellow, beige, seeming so small and narrow yet often three hundred feet wide. We could see little lazy ripples which were in reality treacherous rapids, the waves reaching great heights. We could see the bright spring green of cottonwood trees and Phantom Ranch and the suspension bridge. Down there a mile below us if you went straight down, which it is to be hoped you wouldn't do-was the desert life again; the cacti now coming into full bloom, the lizards and reptiles, the flowers and trees. Down there it was warm, the sun shone and no snow ever falls.

Looking up from the river the Canyon must seem infinite, topless towers and the sky a mere patch of indigo blue.

Here and there against the walls and in crevices of the Canyon there are clumps of Douglas fir. It does not grow on the South Rim, only on the North: yet along these precipitous walls it finds an occasional foothold and shadow in places where where the conditions of the North Rim are reproduced. The colors of the temples, the cathedrals, the colors of the sheer walls changed as we watched; the brilliant red, the rose red, the muted shades, the blues and browns and beige. But beyond the color, beyond the strange shapes wrought by the erosion of billions of years and a flowing river, created by change and time, the im-pression goes deeper it reaches past all the beauty which the mind can grasp into the timelessness which staggers all mortal con-ception. We, who think in terms of decades and centuries, find it difficult to think in terms of mons. Our life span is too short, too crowded. Mr. Davis explained to us how the Canyon was formed and the eternity it took to form it. 1, for one, listened and thought I understood: writing now I find that I am still appalled.

In the observatory we looked from the windows at the Canyon and examined the specimens collected there-preserving the fragile imprint of a fern, holding in rock forever the sea shell which was once upon the ocean floor, keeping in perpetuity the footmark of an animal which perished eternities ago, the track of a great short legged lizard, the trail of something utterly unknown to us. Here in the observatory the story which the Canyon has silently written throughout history, and beyond history, is plain. Out on the great porch the telescopes are trained on various spots in the Canyon, and here, at an allotted time, the men who have made the Canyon their particular study explain patiently and clearly how this won-der came about.

Yavapai Point

Later we saw other things in the Park, the residential community, for instance; for it takes a great many people to supervise a national park the houses and shops and engineering equipment, the provisions made for medical care and hospitalization, the extraordinary engineering feat which brings water to this waterless world; and the provisions made for recreation. Freely. in the snowy yards of the houses, the little mule deer with their soft eyes and big ears, wandered unafraid, as we looked; and we saw innumerable birds, robins, singing in the snow, the crested and pinon jays, nut hatches and chicadees, beautiful hawks in predatory flight, and the western blue bird. Driving through the roads along the Rim we saw two coyotes among the pines; beige and yellow and brown shadows, they stopped and looked at the car. Farther on we saw a a number of mule deer, wild this time, bounding off with their stiff legged gait. dancing under the trees and leaving their hoof prints in the snow.The wild life of the Canyon is wonderful; it is protected and it abounds. And through the snow the sage brush grows, its colors uniquely lovely, the soft gray green tipped with faded beige. On

On the cedar trees we saw the marks of stags who, rubbing the velvet from their antlers, had left the bark scarred.

During the day we went into the Hopi house that exact reproduction of a Hopi dwelling, with its many rooms and fireplaces. The silversmith does not work there now nor the weaver of rugs. for many of the Hopis have been called into service. Eight of them are fighting in the South Pacific. How can they bear it after the beauty of the Canyon, the peace, the clear, high air, and after the familiar wars of their own reservation? But in Hopi house one may still see the rugs and baskets and jewelry which are museum pieces and there, too, some of the families are still living.

We went to the Naturalists' workshop not far from the hotel. Here are the many specimens of plant and animal life preserved for the visitors, the animals mounted, the flowers under glass, the bright butterflies spreading their wings eternally, the far too life-like snakes and lizards. A day spent in this workshop and you could learn a great deal about the five zones of life which exist between the boundaries of the National Park.

I have said that many honeymooners come to the Canyon; and I believe the Canyon has excited and thrilled more famous people than any other place in the world. For Europe, with all her ancient beauty, has nothing like this to offer. No other place has. People not only come to the Canyon to honeymoon and return with their children and their grandchildren, but they are married there, usually in the observatory. Two or three couples a month are married there and what a setting that is for a wedding, rivaling the beauty of any bride, the strength of any bridegroom. And also, as I have said, service men and women come on their leaves -I wonder what they think. Do they think of war? It seems impossible. The Canyon is utterly remote from war, not in the careless, thoughtless, selfish sense of other places, but because it is so old, so eternal. It has survived all the wars that have ever been waged upon the earth's surface; it will survive all the wars that will be waged until the end of time. It was here before Man. and it will be here after him.

Last summer many service men were brought to the Canyon, housed in the CCC camps, for rest and recreation. They were taken down to the trail, they were entertained, they were driven around