Couple more thoughts about the Grand Canyon and I’ll leave it.
We’re now in Santa Fe relishing the memory.
The thing that surprised me most was the amazing serenity which reigned over the place.
That sense arrested my fellow gapers.
Definitely you could see and hear birds but even that was overruled by the enveloping calm....
I expected a boisterous and jostling crowd like we encounter at other tourist spots.
Like we encountered at Mt Rushmore a few weeks earlier.
I mix metaphors when I write as if silence were a visual thing but the peace from the Canyon actually radiated out and controlled the people on the rim.
It was like that hush before the serve at Wimbledon.
Maybe it was the early hour .
Maybe Covid thinned and sobered the crowd.
But it was something very close to REVERENCE.
More than one of you commented that for you it was like looking at a painting.
Very much so.
I had a similar feeling staring at The Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum.
Henri Nouwen , the Dutch Priest who taught at Harvard and Yale wrote a little book about The Prodigal Son.
Not about the Parable but about his experience of Rembrandt’s Painting which hangs in The Hermitage.
Someone must surely have written a book about the experience of contemplating the Grand Canyon.
What I do has required me to visit other countries but there’s much of America I’ve never seen. Also I’m not an enthusiastic inspector of sites which is one reason yesterday’s experience waited until my 70th year.
If you get the chance take it.
If you don’t love it don’t you dare tell me.