by Tom Gulotta
I can't sleep. It's our first night in the Grand Canyon and the adrenaline and wonder have me geared up for some inevitable uncertainty.
I lie in wait, peering up into eternity's deepening womb with my head cradled like an egg in the nest of my woven fingers. The hovering vastness of space incubates the rich, fertile yolk of imagination.
This canyon is a limestone Louvre bursting with ancient abstract wonders, and although we've only been here less than a day, my senses are saturated. I'm still reeling from the flamboyant strokes of color and texture; the exaggerated use of perspective; the craggy Cubism. Such passion. Such patience.
And yet the artist remains anonymous.
Some say that this magnificent display is merely the product of the river's slow, relentless hunger over countless eons. Mindless erosion masquerading as fine art. Others blame biblical floodwaters, or, for the fanciful, Paul Bunyan dragging his enormous axe.
But, regardless of the geological method, the deeper truth I'm hoping for-groping for-is that maybe God himself got on his knees and like a toddler in a sandbox, scooped and sculpted these lavish glories with his bare hands and a boyish grin.
There are no obvious clues-no bronze plaque or dated signature-but around every bend there are nagging hints. The air itself carries on it something almost tangible yet achingly sublime, like a clinging fragrance.
He might have covered his tracks pretty well, but he couldn't mask his scent. And I'm willing to bet there's still dirt under his fingernails.
So, I'm doing a little digging of my own. There's mystery lurking beneath all this majesty, and now, sleepless, I wrestle the furtive night for revelation. Straining to fathom the length and depth and breadth of this two-hundred-mile scar on the face of the world. The earth's furrowed brow.
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I'm glad someone from another era got here first to name it. "Grand" has panache and a sort of everlasting dignity. Grandeur. Grandiose. We would have botched it. The "Rad" Canyon. The "Bitchin'" Canyon.
Even the placenames resonate with melody and lyrical charm:
Elves' Chasm, Vasey's Paradise.
Vulcan's Anvil, Thunder River.
Hell's Hollow, the Bridge of Sighs.
Hear the ring of glossolalia. It must have been a choir of archangels who sang these names for the first time in some epic, primeval creation song. They spoke in tongues and now the river spends eternity babbling interpretations.
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The stars shine clear and large-pencil holes punctured through black construction paper. We can't even see the Milky Way in smoggy Southern California, but out here it streaks, spills, splashes its way across the night sky like a cosmic reflection of the Canyon's own whitewater. An airbrushed swipe across the celestial ceiling.
The constellations promenade through the empyrean, swirling and scoffing in fluid, clockwork choreography. It's a Cynic's Cotillion under the tea-lit canopy.
What must they think of us?
Every now and then a satellite saunters across heaven's vault in a feeble imitation. An orbiting advertisement for human nature: our genius and arrogance. Orion hangs a thumb from his belt and flicks a cigarette like a shooting star. He tilts his head back and blows a smoke-ring nebula. Andromeda hides her face in her gown and mourns, remembering the weight of her chains and the smell of the salt-sea air.
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The rush and roar of the rapids, mumbling their wet praises, slowly fade and disappear to become the foundation upon which the silence rests.
Baboom. Baboom. I think I can hear the plaintive, pulsating drums of the Havasupai summoning up the liquid grace of Cumulonimbus. The reverberations linger throughout these ancient hallways, honoring the memory of another age.
Baboom. Baboom. In truth, it's merely my own lifeblood pounding against my eardrums. A mystical rhythm indeed, but it hardly conveys the prayerful desperation of a hungry tribe. And yetthere's hunger there. And maybe even a prayer. Another kind of wet mumbling. Unfortunately, its tired cadence resembles more of a muffled S-O-S than a raindance.
Would that I had strength of heart like Christ in Gethsemane, who prayed with a desperation that actually fermented the blood and drew it to the surface. A kind of anguish of soul that wrung great drops of sacred vintage like sweat from his brow, enough to fill the Holy Grail itself. That's a passion I can't even begin to understand. For him that night, the garden became the Arizona desert and he pounded and he bled and he prayed for a deluge.
Why do I seem so content to settle for drizzle?
Truth be told, I've always felt hesitant about knocking too loudly, asking for too much rain. Too much grace. After all, "to whom much is given, much is required."
If nothing else, hearing a pulse is proof that I'm alive, and while I may not need that kind of reassurance here, maybe there's a chance that I can recapture it when I get back home. Back in the grind. Back where the deafening din of an ordinary day drowns out the subtle undertones of the heart.
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The bats, too numerous to fully imagine and, thankfully, invisible at night, dance a drunken reel in the air above us. Invisible except for tiny tricks of shadow flitting across the stars. Creaking, whistling, they swoop and spiral, following their radar in M�bius paths-the symbol for infinity-in mad pursuit of moths and mosquitoes. Midnight snack, I guess. Or lunch, for all I know of their biological clocks. There must be thousands of them above us; millions throughout the length of the canyon. Each one charting its own course. No two following the same path.
Could they be tracing the outlines of our fingerprints in the murky half-light? Or, are they autographing the night breezes, revealing our secret names to us?
I squint through the gloom, trying to decipher the cryptic poetry of their flight and for an instant I recognize a signature. There's a quickening of the heart. A tingling in the scalp. And it's gone. The darkness swallows its secret and all I'm left with is a stone in my throat and a bittersweet ache, as though I'd just heard my name softly spoken by a long-forgotten voice. A voice last heard in the whispered hush of a childhood dream. I close my eyes and try to swallow as a wind-chilled tear tickles my ear.
Do these bats know their own mischief? I want to believe so.
Maybe this is what's meant by blind faith. The dancing. The whistling. The mad pursuit. The wanting to believe.
We're all nightblind in this dark, hungering world, yet, trusting, we take to our wings and do our damnedest to track those elusive signals, those stray blips and echoes, which, at any given moment, might be a beacon from home or just a shifting of the wind.
I really can't say what's going on up there. I feel a sense of communion, and at the same time, I see that my path, like my thumbprint, is mine alone and I can't help but feel unique.
Not stamped, but signed. Not typed, but handwritten.
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Through the starlight, I spot a ring-necked lizard doing push-ups on a nearby rock. Some sort of reptilian genuflect in honor of his maker. He hurries off to pursue his instinctual destiny without the burden we call conscience.
His whole existence echoes of Eden-eat, sleep, mate, sleep again. No wrestling with demons. No wrestling with angels either, for that matter, but it does make me wonder what it must have been like in that garden.
On second thought, I remember the hawks and falcons we've seen circling above the North Rim. It seems there's no immunity from the Fall. Eat, sleep, mate, HIDE, sleep again. "All creation groans." We've been hiding ever since.
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The few lacy wisps of cloud overhead are beginning to glow with a burnished iridescence. I sit upright. Across the river, on the upper rim of the far canyon, a sliver of silver ribbon appears and the liquid luminescence seeps down the canyon wall like a curtain being lowered. Like the hem of His garment. I reach out to touch it.
My first thought is that it must be dawn, but the sky is still much too dark. In a matter of minutes the entire canyon wall is illumined. The waterfalls glisten, the rivulets gleam. A moment longer and the teeming river yields and receives the heavenly seed. Newborn constellations burst forth and shimmer in the whitewater's foamy sheen.
The brilliance swarms and fords the raging river and, like a searchlight, sneaks its way up the sandy bank toward my cot. I feel trapped, exposed, then captured. I raise my hands in surrender. In praise.
I can feel someone staring, so I struggle to my feet and turn, facing the flood head on. The biggest, brightest moon I've ever seen is gazing down into the canyon like the great eye of God, and I have to squint to look at it. I raise my forearm across my face to ward off the moonbeams. They're sure to be radioactive at this magnitude. Gamma rays or something.
The bats have become dust specks trapped in the blazing vortex of a giant movie projector. I suppose that would make this world the movie. That would explain some things.
The mercury river now appears frozen; a monochromatic blur etched in the silver nitrate of an Old West photogravure. She clutches a misty shawl about her neck and shivers under the icy white glare, whereas just a few feet from her frigid shore, saints in sleeping bags bask in the warmth of the radiant lunar spray. They might be babes wrapped in swaddling clothes or shrouded chrysalides on the verge of resurrection.
I can actually see rays of moonlight. Can that be? The flaming silver spears cleave the darkness and imbed themselves deep within the marrow, the fibre, the core of every slumbering prop on this floodlit stage. Sharp blue shadows spread like bloodstains. Every rock has a nimbus, every tree a halo.
A pungent incense haze drapes itself dreamily over the pewter landscape, anointing the celebrants with balm and spice. It reeks from the incandescent soil as if the earth itself were a censer, swinging through the heavens on silver chains, blessing the stars and preparing the universe for some great and final ceremony.
This campground has been bathed in splendor, baptized with holy fire and transformed into a sacred grove. A tabernacle in the wilderness. I check the shrubbery for flames, for this truly must be hallowed ground. Fortunately, I'm already barefoot or I'd have surely been struck dead by now.
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The goosebumps eventually recede and my heartbeat downshifts into its natural, languid rhythm. I return half-heartedly to my cot.
Maybe I was smitten by lunacy-what they used to call moon-sickness. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it. After all, science offers cold, mechanical explanations for the whole affair. It's Astronomy 101. So then, why, tonight, do I feel so touched by the hand of God? And why does this place feel so much like his sandbox?
Mystery begets mystery and revelations tend to reveal a deeper unknowing, but the cool canyon breeze smacks of that clinging fragrance again. A knowing blush blooms across the cloudy eastern horizon. The pale glimmer of truth slowly dawns.
This resplendent, obedient orb is merely reflecting a greater glory which, for a time, remains unseen. "Now we see through a glass darkly."
The whole of creation is a metaphor, brimming with allusions, glimpses, fragments, yearnings. Rough sketches and faded photographs. Like an eyewitness under an oath of silence, its confessions are confined to wordless, overwrought grimaces and wild, primitive gestures. Mute fingers pointing beyond the obvious toward the obscure. The invisible. The impending.
Tonight we read by moonlight, but in the morning the metamorphosis unfolds, the cocoon of night is rent like a veil, and butterflies dance on sunlight, tracing the paths of bats.
