A Grand Christmas

HRINE OF THE AGES CHRISTMAS EVE AT THE GRAND CANYON

It is Christmas Eve at the Grand Canyon. A chill wind whispers. Transient snowflakes float down the night through boughs of pine and cling to headstones in the old cemetery where early Grand Canyon pioneers sleep, some for nearly a century. A few hundred yards to the north, the world's most awesome gorge lies shrouded in darkness.

Just beyond the headstones, the massive rock walls of the Canyon's Shrine of the Ages stand in silhouette against winter sky. Inside, under a beamed ceiling of native timber, hundreds of flickering hand-held candles define the faces of the assembled. Some of the people live and work at the Canyon's edge: a National Park Service ranger, a mule wrangler and his family, waiters and cooks from a nearby hotel. But most have come from afar. The voices sing as the voice of one. Silent night, holy night Candlelight catches the dark features of an exchange student from Nigeria. All is calm, all is bright It touches the countenances of an Oriental husband and wife, who, five years before, fled from the People's Republic of China.

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 48 AND 49) Winter transforms the Grand Canyon into a wonderland of frosted vistas. Seen from Yaki Point after a snowfall, O'Neill Butte shines in the early-morning sunlight. TOM DANIELSEN (PRECEDING PANEL, PAGE 49, INSET) People from around the world celebrate Christmas at a candlelight service in the Canyon's Shrine of the Ages. (ABOVE) Getting there is half the fun when visitors, including author William Hafford and his son, take the steam train from Williams to the Canyon. (RIGHT) A morning fog adds to the adventure of riding a mule down Bright Angel Trail.

(OPPOSITE PAGE) Snow softens the ever-changing face of the Canyon, viewed from Mather Point.

HRINE OF THE AGES

It flickers across the high-cheekboned, almond-eyed faces of Navajo visitors from their reservation to the east.

Blond-haired children. Babies held in arms. Old and young. From nearly every state. From nations around the globe. From New Zealand and New Jersey. From Norway and North Carolina.

They sing in the darkened shrine illuminated by candlelight. Bundled in scarves and winter garb. A living Norman Rockwell painting.

Unseen, and 5,000 feet below the Canyon Rim, the unrelenting liquid force of the mighty Colorado River carves deeper and deeper into the oldest exposed rock on planet Earth. Carves as it has for millions of years, as the voices sing.

Three days before, my college-age son, Bart, and I had started north from the palm-lined avenues of Phoenix to spend Christmas at the Grand Canyon. Through the dark of early evening, we drove north on Interstate 17, climbing out of the Sonoran Desert, across a broad plateau of grassland, into forests of junipers, then piñon pines, then towering ponderosas.

Along the way, I spoke with Mother Nature and told her that we needed a storybook scene for tomorrow's steam-train ride north from Williams to the South Rim. By the time we had ascended above 6,000 feet, the sky was spitting snow.

The next morning in Williams, I anxiously pulled aside the curtain on our motel-room window. "Yes, indeed. Thank you, Mother Nature!" The mountains behind the Mountainside Inn were dressed in winter white.

Later one of the antique engines of the Grand Canyon Railway a 1906 model - chugged, tooted, and whistled us from Williams through a Christmas-card landscape. The restored three-car train, filled to capacity, swayed rhythmically around the white flanks of pine-covered volcanic hills. Across broad meadows. Past the ragged escarpments of limestone bluffs.

On a broad plain, the snow appeared only in scattered patches. Beside the tracks, a herd of grazing pronghorns eyed the mechanical intrusion. The engine whistled, and the tawny white-rumped creatures among the fastest animals on our continent wheeled and darted toward the horizon.

Attendants served steaming coffee while a pair of roving minstrels plucked, strummed, and sang us along our 64-mile journey to the Canyon.

That evening, under a clearing sky, Bart and I stood on the limestone surface at Trailview Overlook just west of Grand Canyon Village. To the east, beyond Wotans Throne and the multitude of ragged buttes that spring from the Canyon floor, a full moon, orange, huge, and slowly rising, appeared above the miledeep gorge.

Poinsettias and Christmas stockings (LEFT) add a festive touch to the fireplace in the lobby of the historic El Tovar Hotel. (BELOW) Pat Gorraiz traditionally arrives at the Canyon with the winter solstice. Perched on a rock, be contemplates the power of Granite Rapids.

On Christmas Eve morning, I walked to the mule corral near the Bright Angel trailhead to watch tourists mount up for a winter ride into the Grand Canyon's depths. Before departure, their guide, wearing a wide-brimmed black Stetson, provided a crisp lecture on mule-riding manners and safety. “The trail is icy today,” he said, “but them mules all have steel cleats on their shoes. For near a hundred years, no mule has ever fallen from the trail and killed a rider.” He spit tobacco juice.

The riders, a few displaying weak smiles of trepidation, hoisted themselves into the saddles. Some had scarves wrapped around their faces; some wore earmuffs. All were bundled against the cold.

From a good vantage point, I watched as the line descended the serpentine snow-covered path. Although the sky above was almost clear, the gorge itself was filled with heavy clouds that had settled in during the night. The Canyon was hidden, except for the highest protruding buttes.

Down, down, down the mule riders went, entering the vapor mass, and for a few moments before they disappeared from my view entirely it looked as though they and their mounts were floating through the clouds. Later Bart and I visited the geologic museum at Yavapai Point, where huge plate-glass windows face the Canyon. For long minutes, we could see nothing but swirling clouds below the Rim. Occasionally ravens would emerge from the white mass, wings extended, gliding on a Canyon current. The dark birds would sweep across the landscape then dive back into the enveloping white. Finally the clouds parted, and, far below, we could see the narrow line of Bright Angel Trail where it makes its final descent down the plum-colored nearly vertical walls of the Inner Gorge. Through an eroded cleft, a stretch of the great river, highlighted by a shaft of sunlight, could be seen. Usually the Colorado is a jadegreen stripe, but winter runoff had turned it rusty red.

HRINE OF THE AGES

In the afternoon, I lounged in front of the massive rock fireplace in the lobby of the El Tovar Hotel, built in 1905 by the Fred Harvey Company. Compared to crowded summers, the year-end holidays are lightly booked. Historic El Tovar and neighboring Bright Angel fill up, but other lodges in the national park and the nearby community of Tusayan usually have vacancies, even on Christmas Eve. Near dusk Bart and I drove west along To the Rim to Hopi Point, where we left our vehicle and walked to the precipitous edge. The heavy cloud mass had drifted out of the Canyon, but a few lingering tufts floated below us, sliding between the shadowed buttes. High above, a new cloud bank rolled in from the east, bringing the promise of evening snow. The winter sun drops quickly. We remained there on the promontory until darkness slid across the buttes and down the harshly eroded cliffs. Two hours later, we are among the faces touched by candlelight. And the voices singing: Silent night, holy night It is Christmas Eve at the Grand Canyon.

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