The Sound of Silence

You come upon the Grand Canyon suddenly, almost without warning. Oh, you know it's there, all right. As you get out of your car, you see the people lined up in front of where the earth stops, staring over the edge. And, way off on the other side, you can see the earth start up again and roll off into the hazy Arizona horizon. So you know that this is it, that out there and down there is the thing you've driven so far to see.But when you walk to the edge, you're not really ready for it. It's like snapping on a light in a dark room. Suddenly, there it is, the whole thing, all at once, bamm an enormous, jagged tear in the earth, a hole so huge you have to swing your head around to see it all, just as you have to in Montana to see the sky, or at dawn to see the sea. 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.

And, for the most part, the people just stand there, listening, holding their breath, waiting. There are none of the “Ooooh's or “Ahhhh's you hear at Disneyland and at fireworks displays and on top of the Empire State Building, none of the “Wow's or “Look at that's you hear at Yellowstone and Sequoia and Carlsbad. There is only an awesome stillness that wells up from the depths of the earth and strikes you dumb.

After awhile, you get used to it, and you come out of your trance, saying, “Let's walk over here a bit.” But the stillness stays with you. It dogs your steps and deadens your footfalls. It wraps your voice in cotton. It clogs your ears.

And, slowly, you start to wallow in it, until finally it becomes personal and private, and you begin to understand what Kostelanetz meant when he said that, “Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive, or quiet and calm one of the greatest sounds of them all and to me it is a sound is utter, complete silence.” And as the silence becomes more allembrasive, you actually begin to hear it, just as you actually see the darkness when you close your eyes.

But just because you hear the nothingness, do not think that nothing is happening. Change is happening. Silently, imperceptibly, inexorably, the canyon is changing, just as it has for two billion years.

For this immense sculpture is not the result of some deafening, cataclysmic, cracking-apart of the earth's surface.

It was formed by the wind lifting a grain of sand from over there and placing it down over here, grain after grain after grain; and by the sea burying a tiny, white-shelled creature in the mud, shell after shell after shell.

It was formed by the slight movements of the earth's surface, by slow shiftings and liftings and slidings and faultings and foldings.

It was formed by the slow, silent cementing action and crushing pressures of ancient seas, and by the relentless cutting of a mighty river.

"Be there ever a land where Angels tread, this must surely be that place...." William Wayne

And even as you look, the changes continue.

The earth is moving; the river is cutting; and a soft wind is floating through the canyon, brushing its shoulder against some Chinese temple-like pillar of stone, wearing away a relic that was formed in the same silence that now witnesses its erosion.

If you're very lucky, you'll not only get there when the wind is down, you'll get there when it's cloudy. The clouds make shadows. And the shadows make the canyon change. They cut into the rock, flowing in pools of ink across the wrinkled, eroded, wind-ravished landscape, pouring into the arroyos, washes, gulleys, canyons, and valleys, flooding the hills, ridges, buttes, plateaus, boulders, rocks and cliffs, spilling over the tops of steeples, peaks, columns, spires, pinnacles, and towers.

If you're lucky, you'll get to the canyon when the wind is down. When the wind is up, you tend to listen to it, rather than to the silence from below, for it whistles through the teeth of the Juniper trees that guard the rim of the canyon. Indeed, there are times when the wind is full, and then it pours through the branches with the roar of a waterfall, rustling leaves, breaking twigs, showering you with noise, with whooshes and hisses and snaps and cracks. But mostly, the wind is still, and the trees stand mute, a hushed audience to the scene below. And as the shadows seep over the cream and gray limestone, the grey slate, the black lava, the blood and buff sandstone, the red hermit shale, they turn the canyon into a layered cathedral of shifting colors, into soft whites and

Grand Canyon

From the high walls One peers deep, Searchingly, Into the canyon below.

Each tinted layer Of aged stone Is etched Indelibly by the past.

Every layer Is a page Retelling Happenings of years gone by.

There, furthest down, The oldest, Recalling An old world empty of life.

Another, closer, Bears seashells, Remaining Signs of an ancient seabed.

And yet one more, Still nearer, Carrying Pottery shards of early man.

Each passing age Or culture Imprinting A signature to its page.

In years to come New tourists, Arriving, Will gaze at the page we sign.

What of beauty Do we leave, Revealing Our way of life and learning?

Mr. Moloney

ochres, fiery-reds, rusty-tans, blacks, violets, vermillions, terra-cottas, white-washed greens, dusty-pinks, and laven-der-browns.

But it is a symphony for the eye, not the ear. Even when the sun thunders through the clouds and explodes in a shattering flash on the raging ribbon of the Colorado a mile below on the canyon floor, even then there is no noise. It is a silent explosion. You wait, expecting a low rumble or a crack of thunder to follow the flash. But the stillness holds. And you stand there a bit longer, listening, holding your breath, waiting.

Perhaps the best time of all to get there is at dawn. Dawn speaks in whispers, and the long, low light seems to make the silence thicker, just as it makes the colors richer. You stand there wondering, listen-ing; watching the colors silently change, alone in your cocoon of silence. Shhhh. Be still. Quiet.

"Men fear silence as they fear solitude," the French novelist Maurois says, "because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothing-ness." Perhaps. But there is no fear, no solitude, no terror, no nothingness in the silence at Grand Canyon. There is only awe.