This is almost becoming embarrassing. I re-read the last entry: “when I decide not to continue,” I said, the next stop would be the Grand Canyon. Well, I did go to the canyon, and I am here to write yet another entry in the saga of my continuing adventures with Michel Keever. Perhaps I should just send in an application, or whatever you have to do, to nominate him for sainthood. Or perhaps, as he might say, and probably has, I’m not giving myself enough credit, since Keever or not, I had the perfect opportunity for a grand end at that huge hole and didn’t take it.
I was in a strange position emotionally and physically to make the trip with Michael. Fit enough (the fluctuations of MS alone are enough to drive one over the edge) to feel I had the energy to propel myself out of that chair, but strong enough also to have the energy for the “shock and awe” that I felt when seeing the canyon for the first time. I’d heard people had many different reactions, from ho-hum to seeing angels, but my reaction came more gradually: the initial wonder and mind game I had to keep playing to realize that yes, it is as huge as it looks and the little tiny wave I see on the Colorado down below is really huge whitewater crests, followed by the sense of expansiveness of time, space, memory, love, beauty, acceptance . . . . So much felt endless as I gazed from along the rim.
One perk of the wheelchair is not having to ride on crowded, jouncing buses the other tourists had to take to reach some of the overlooks. Michael got a special permit and we drove the rental van west to Maricopa Point where the hawks glided and dived, to Hopi Point for a sunset like no other I’ve ever seen, to the Abyss where others have, in the past, found their final calling, and east to Kaibab and to Yaki Point, where the canyon looked, if it’s possible, even more beautiful. He even helped haul me out of the chair so I could sit on the sandstone edges and gape. But I’m avoiding “the moment” that probably turned it around for me.
Michael and I arranged to eat early the next morning so I could, as I told him, people watch. By 8 a.m., tourists were already lining the rim and gathering in knots, silently or chattering feverishly. I thought Michael and I would also gaze and chat, and then I could ask him to get lunch for us, ostensibly so we could eat as we did more gazing. His absence would be the moment when I could do whatever was called for. But after polite talk about childhood vacations, Michael surprised me, pulling hiking boots out of the backpack he’d brought and announcing he was heading down Bright Angel trail to the first turnaround. He knew how I’d felt in San Francisco—he knew what the possibilities were. Was he making it easier for me? Tempting me? Of course, I said fine, go, whatever, and watched him trek off without a backward glance.
So I sat. I watched the little boy giggle over the squirrel sitting up on his haunches begging for peanuts. Finally, the mother said, “no more pictures of the squirrel!” as the canyon gaped behind them. Others gazed at the canyon. Roy, as he introduced himself, stared along with Junior and Higgins, his two blond labs. He let out their leashes when I asked if I could pet them, and they moved tentatively, sideling up to my chair; my one-finger petting turned them into gleeful pups. They licked my finger, my hand, my arm up past my elbow, bumping each other to get closer to me. The canyon, boys! Isn’t that what you’re here for? Then there were the couples, holding hands, leaning shoulders into each other for support at seeing what was larger than even their feelings for each other. The old Indian woman, with her black felt hat and feathers and silver encrusted boots, who gazed at the canyon, turned and looked me straight in the eyes, and nodded, a hint of a smile on her lips. I took it all in, then pushed my chair’s electric button so I could travel down the walkway a bit, away from the people and the small stone wall that separated them from the canyon.
And then I was crying, not a quiet, few-tears-dropping kind of cry, but a sob that wrenched my body so hard I thought I’d fall out of the chair. I pivoted so I faced toward a small evergreen, away from the main flow of pedestrians, and I sobbed. What pulled at me so hard I couldn’t breathe was suddenly remembering my father with whom I’d hiked as a child in many of the states except this one: his own MS finally having drained him of all hope and energy, he looked at an old Time-Life book on the Grand Canyon, dragged his finger along the rims, nodded his head. I saw clearly what his face would look like if he ever saw this place in person—the beatific look that would have come over him. I wanted to resurrect him, assure him that it was as magnificent as imagined it would be as he sat in his metal cage of a chair.
I felt Michael’s hand on my shoulder. “I wondered where you were,” he said. “Been reminiscing” I managed, and he nodded, then hunched down next to me in his dusty boots. It could have been a coincidence, his leaving like that. But now, we watched how the scuttling clouds threw their patterns across the canyon. At some point—I’m not even sure we talked about it—we decided to have lunch on the road, on our way back to the airport, on our way home. Maybe the conclusion will take another trip. Or maybe there’ll be another trip to write about.
