Maybe it's the whole Daylight Savings thing (Arizona doesn't observe it). And maybe I'm just used to the sun coming up through coastal clouds. Whatever it was, I was up at about 5am after a tossy-turny night.
When I woke up, my computer was still spazzing, but I decided I had plenty of time to figure out what that meant for my job, so I packed up, checked out, and wrote some postcards over a light desert breakfast. It was still cool, but I could feel the heat of the day coming on. Even the waiter was like, "I try to tell these people how much water it takes to digest these big breakfasts, but they still want eggs, bacon, pancakes..." I bought a gallon jug of water and headed for the park entrance.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at the crowds, even at 8:30 am: a week before July 4 at one of the great tourist attractions in America, if not the world. Why a dozen busloads of Koreans chose that morning to arrive at one of this country's premier holes in the ground may forever be beyond my ken, however. I considered making for the North Rim, but that would take hours and get me there in the main heat of the day. I had nothing but running shoes, no water in a carryable size... and no real desire for an expedition, anyway. I just needed some peace and quiet. I headed to the trailhead on the South Rim furthest from bus parking: Grandview.
Once the aging frat boys got finished bellowing into the canyon (why do Americans always seem to do the most cringeworthy things just when foreigners are watching?) it actually got pretty tolerably calm. I hiked a couple thousand feet down and found a little cleared area that led to a cleft in the rock where I could sit and not see - or be seen by - anyone else. This was about as much solitude as it seemed I was likely to get.
I did some breathing meditation to quiet my mind and clear out the jangling energy of all those tourists. Once I settled, it was actually not all that distracting to hear the occasional snatch of conversation or sound of boots on the trail. The hugeness of the canyon tends to be a pretty effective sink for human disturbance.
I wondered for a bit about my constant need for distraction - with my computer and Blackberry safely packed away there was nowhere to go but inside, and I had some time to catch up with all the various dramatic changes of the past months. So many things had just come to a close, and the new phase of my life hadn't even revealed itself in all its details. I was, literally, sitting in limbo, in open space.
Most of what passed through my mind under that rock is non-bloggable stuff. What I can say about the experience is that it represented the clean break that merely leaving San Diego did not achieve, with all the packing and rushing about. It felt very much that my entire life up to that point had brought me to that quiet place on the cliffside, and I hung out there for a few hours before moving on.
The car was warm and welcoming. Still with the music off, I headed back out on the open road. The deep quiet was refreshing, and the vistas of the Kaibab and Coconino forests uplifted me - there had apparently been a recent fire, and blackened trunks were intermixed with bright green saplings.
It's incredibly clichè to say that change is the only constant, but the things that seem so simple and obvious are things we so often ignore.
Reset.
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