La Macchina Fotografica

Daylight Saving Time plays tricks come October. The mornings are dark long beyond when my body clock says “Morning!”. My brain tells me to get up. My eyes say something different. I don’t like to move clocks forward and backward. It feels like I’m trying to cheat the cosmos or mold it into some kind of seasonal convenience. It never works. October mornings are dark forever.

I woke up the other morning and it was even darker than normal. “Fog!” I said to myself and sprung out of bed. I am energized by weather, especially gloominess. I grabbed my camera and went down to the park, knowing that the low-hanging fog would soon burn off like cotton candy on a tongue.

The sun poked through the mist. I had less time than I thought. Exposure is tricky when shooting into the misty sun. I fumbled with the stupid camera controls, missing the blunt simplicity of my long-lost Nikon F—a camera that mysteriously disappeared many years ago. I spun my thumb and index finger, and click, click, click.

New cameras have these crappy little spin wheels and buttons that never seem intuitive. It’s a simple reciprocal relationship between aperture and shutter. But, modern cameras seem to think I need five thousand pieces of data in order to get a photo. Buttons, metadata, presets. I don’t need 90% of what the camera thinks I do. If I push all the buttons will it make my photos better? I don’t have that many fingers!

I ignore everything and bracket the shots. “Maybe if I hang the manual around my neck…” I say to myself and the imaginary camera engineer that I complain to all the time. Suddenly I realize that it isn’t about the camera at all. The light is stunning and it’s disappearing right before me. I grab at the fog and try to make it last. “One more photo!” I plead to it. But the sun burns through it all and I need my sunglasses by the time I click my last click.

I went back home in the low October light, hoping I got the photo. The golden sun erased the moment, but there it was again, appearing on my studio computer. The miracle of digital photography gave me instant feedback. The manual bracketing did the job and hit the sweet spot of exposure.

Now, if only they would do something about those buttons and spin wheels…

“Let’s get the show on the road!” my father always said when he got impatient. I always imagined us as small circus ensemble as we’d rush to get into the car. It felt like he was ready to drive off without us if we didn’t hustle. Dad loved to drive. If it were a long trip he’d have a thermos of coffee that he’d refill again and again at truck stops along the way. Day of night, he’d drink coffee and drive.

We’d go on these cross-country trips in August. Dad would drive the whole way. Once he drove straight from Arizona to Columbus, Ohio. The rest of us were exhausted but the agonizing drive didn’t faze him. At a gas station, while he was filling his thermos, we made our move—refusing to get back into the car. He begrudgingly got us a room at a local motel but resumed his mania the next morning. “Let’s get the show on the road!”

While packing and preparing for a trip is an endless stream of to-do lists, exhilaration supersedes all when we finally hit the road. Wind to our back, we race off. In constant motion we cut through air, race past the inert. We’re on the way. All possibilities lie before us. The past shrinks right before our eyes.

If I were a dog, I’d be the kind to stick my head out the window. Nose in the air, I’d sniff the world for exotic new fragrances. My ears would flap, I’d stick out my tongue and grin in that dog-like way. Dogs know just like my dad did—there ain’t nothin’ like getting the show on the road.

A fair! There is nothing like it to stir the imagination. I’ve loved fairs since I was a young boy on the boardwalks of the Jersey Shore. Fairs, carnivals, circuses and boardwalk, they will forever gladden my heart.

Every fair is designed for spectacle. There is always something there to amaze us, to yank our consciousness out of its day-to-day dullness. There was a time in our early days of life when everything would yield wide-eyed amazement. Then adulthood turns us jaded. We’ve seen it all before. A fair’s purpose is to change all that and to bring back the balloons of our youth.

While staying near the Sedona airport after our Grand Canyon hike we noticed a traffic jam. The asked the woman with the beehive hair in the hotel office what the commotion was all about. “It’s the Sedona Community Fair!” she proclaimed through an Arizona drawl. “Lots of old cars and planes and food and wine.” Her painted fingernails swirled around in the air for emphasis.

As we walked past the traffic jam towards the fair entrance I could feel my footsteps quicken. My legs remember the boardwalks and county fairs of my youth. I could feel the anticipation. I could smell the popcorn, a particularly delicious scent that I’ve never, ever been able to resist.

Inside there were, indeed, lots of cars and planes and food and wine. However, in the center of the fair stood a young woman wrapped by a lovely boa constrictor. All the kids were there, in hushed silence, petting the lovely reptile. The woman kept lifting the snake upwards like a pair of baggy pants. The heavy creature was sliding down a bit, too gentle to constrict too much.

“Does the snake ever squeeze you?” I asked.

“Sometimes she gets a little too snug with me,” she answered with a smile. “Right now she’s a little loose,” she added as she pulled up the snake one more time.

The snake seemed heavy and limp, kind of the way my cat gets when I rub her belly. Maybe it was the kids who kept petting her. The expensive cars and planes were getting some attention but everyone wanted to pet the snake. I felt happy for snakes everywhere who, after Eve ate her apple, have been getting a bum deal most everywhere. Who would have guessed that a boa constrictor would have been the star of the fair?

You can feel it in the air the day before. There’s a undercurrent of apprehension. No one will admit to it, everyone seems a little too cheerful. But, little things give it away.

We start packing and unpacking and packing again, as if reviewing everything one more time will lighten the load on the way up. Endless chatter commences about the difficulty or ease of the climb. One minute we figure it will be easy, the next we’re not so sure. We agree on a time to leave, then agree again. And then once more.

The descent into the canyon requires an intensity of concentration. It’s a constant break against gravity along with a skeletal pounding that can shake out the most secure of dental fillings. The abyss reminds us to slow it down and watch out for loose pebbles. The knees take the brunt of the beating. Mentally, it’s more work going down than up.

Going up is a matter of brutal survival. It’s the ultimate bottom line. If you don’t make it up you are food for the vultures. The buzzards soar overhead in a kind of hopeful ballet and as an ominous reminder of the task at hand. What goes down must come up. The canyon is no place for long-term habitation. Even on the way down we know that the every step must be repeated uphill, long after our legs have been pounded and then pounded again.

The first steps are the worst. I grumble to myself and anyone unfortunate enough to be near me. Leaving before 6:00 AM makes it worse. Not a morning person, my legs feel like lead as we climb up to the black bridge that spans the Colorado River. The steps up to the bridge deck seem high. Worse, I know that at the end of the deck the party ends. It’s pretty much straight up 5000 feet to the top along a seven-mile trail.

This is the first time we tackle the South Kaibab Trail on the way up. We hear it’s more efficient, faster, steeper, more dramatic than Bright Angel Trail. All the park employees go up this way so we figure they know best. There’s no water on the trail so we decided the night before—as part of our forever rumination—on carrying five liters to be safe. It’s early and cool. We should make it up before noon with water to spare. Or, so goes the theory.

Five years of this have taught me to go at a steady pace and to keep going. That’s the way the mules do it and this climb is pretty much their life. I figure they should know. After a half hour my legs warm up and I start to have fun in a quasi-masochistic way. I complain but not very seriously. The sunrise is achingly spectacular and I find myself on a cliff of paradise. Pretty soon I give up grumbling all together and start humming Roy Orbison songs. I realize that the climb gets easier every year—even as I get older. This is satisfying beyond words.

The air gets thinner and brisker as we climb. Suddenly I realize that we are in the high desert again. I catch a wisp of juniper. The rocks change rapidly. Redwall Limestone…Hermit Shale…Coconino Sandstone. We climb through hundreds of millions of years frozen in stone.

Kaibab Limestone! I’ve learned to know Kaibab Limestone as a dear old friend. It is the final layer in this enormous confection. Actually, it’s the frosting…the top…the rim…the final climb. We find miraculous energy as we see smiling faces looking down at us. The last few steps are among the sweetest in life. We are there.

On the final segment we notice concerned looks. “Are you guys okay?” we hear more than once. Better than okay, we feel like crusty old survivors. Sweaty, grimy, disheveled and unshaven, we expect no awards for style upon our arrival at the trailhead kiosk. Simple high fives will do. As gnarly as we look, the damn buzzards will have to wait one more year.

With lots of time and open space, my imagination expands. The North Kaibab Trail has led me here. I started the morning seeing my frosty breath and now, after descending into the belly of the earth, it’s nearly 100 degrees. Ponderosa pines have given way to gnarly little cacti that are nipping at my ankles.

The bone-dry rock is relieved by the sound of an adjacent creek. Bright Angel Creek is like a faithful dog. At our side for the remainder of the hike, it guides us, its companionship soothing and assuring.

Lulled into a hot hypnosis, we trudge along. We suddenly enter a flood plain of the creek. The flora make no sense here—a tiny patch of wetlands within a vast canyon of rock and dust. Having been here before, I’m prepared for the shocking change. The sound of the creek is amplified among the tall grass, turning my world into a fantasy. My imagination churns with the creek.

A hiker approaches, nods, and passes onward. I wonder who he his, where he’s from, and what brings him to this place at this time. I’ll never know. I make a photo of him to record the event. He disappears forever among the grass. His photo remains.

Like this man, most hikers mind their own business, mentally lost in the immenseness of the canyon. We exchange hushed greetings as we pass one another—brief encounters along the trail of life. Oddly, I keenly remember the faces of many of them. They are like flash-bulb snapshots in my mind, forever frozen in that moment of encounter.

Other hikers are less enigmatic. They exchange information with us—some even hike along if they are going in the same direction. They tell us abridged versions of their life. It’s like reading one of those Reader’s Digest condensed books I knew as a kid. Yet another snapshot of a life, these short stories feed my imagination even more as we ultimately part and move on our own way, at our own speed.

The trail is a collection of these brief encounters of being together in the greatness of this place. Each hiker approaches. Each one unique. Each one with a presence. Each one with a story. And then we all go on our way, ultimately shrouded in the mystery of life.

An artist knows how quickly light changes. Landscape painters are keenly aware of shadow movement. Painting outdoors is a humbling experience. Nothing stands still. The universe speeds up and becomes elusive, as if it were aware that someone was trying to capture it.

I walk in the canyon early to avoid the searing midday heat. Each step lulls me into the same kind of hypnotic effect that painting en plein air would have on me. Time dissolves into a metronome beat. I look down to make sure of where I walk. Snakes, rocks, cacti and mule poop are all to be avoided. When I look up I see the changes. The light morphs gently yet relentlessly. The canyon shadow shifts, changes color, shrinks. My own shadow looks alien in the craggy geometry of crumbling rock. I am an interloper here.

I come bundled into this alien landscape equipped like a moonwalker. My liquid life support is strapped to my back. Once the water is gone I have about an hour or two to survive, something that I never forget as the shadow shrinks toward noon. The shadow tells me everything as does the color of light. A camera grabs the moment more quickly than a paintbrush, so I keep clicking with fascination.

The golden morning shifts toward a clean whiteness of high noon. All shadow disappears into flatness. My own shadow shrinks to insignificance. White hot. I lose my interest in art. I’m more worried about cactus stings as my legs become leaden and clumsy. The heat starts to press down on me. I make a mental calculation about my water supply.

High noon comes and goes. There is nothing to mark its passage except an imperceptible return of shadow growth. Soon the canyon shadow lengthens again, this time in the opposing direction. Light turns to gold. A slight breeze softens the air. I think about art again as the aching beauty blooms in my presence. Cactus stings be damned, I look up to watch my shadow as it flows across the canyon plateau.

Gasping for breath on steep inclines, I tend to chatter to myself on the trail—especially when the trek gets tough. Maybe it’s the endorphins, the energy drink, an over-baked brain, or simply oxygen deprivation. Anyone who listens gets an earful.

“I’ve decided,” I say between gulps of rarified desert air, “that the key to a long, happy life…” My incessant talking requires more air—I take a mid-sentence breath. “…is to keep moving!” My friend Karl seems conveniently out of listening range. He stays ahead at a rapid pace, not responding. “Once you stop moving, it’s all over.” I finish my sentence to myself.

We humans are meant to move. We are built to navigate our way through the swirling changes of the universe. Our curiosity is the carrot that keeps us going. Once we lose that, the sparkle in our eye starts to dim.

“Marvelous day!” a 78-year-old German woman remarks as she passes us on the North Kaibab Trail. Tagging along, a young man follows her, trying to keep up. She is the most purposeful hiker we meet that day, radiant with life. We hear her announce her age to someone else she passes. Passing through 78 and the canyon floor, she doesn’t seem like a person who looks much in her rearview mirror. We never see her again.

Looking ahead, I see Karl bound up another steep incline, walking into the sun. His energy seems to match the fireball in the sky. The canyon around him seems to be suspended in time—boulders are stopped halfway down enormous cliffs. Slides seem frozen. Rocks teeter on the edge of falling into the abyss but never seem to get that extra nudge. Of course, this is an illusion. The entire canyon changes with every step, just too slowly for our mortal beings to comprehend. Geology has its own timeframe. But, it’s all moving.

I finally stop talking as I watch Karl disappear into the canyon and sun. I want to take it all in with my next breath. I stop to make a photo. Then, I pick up my feet and start moving again.

Legs wobbly from the fourteen miles of the previous day, it takes a new mile on this new day to get the rust out of my joints. There’s little warmup. We’re heading straight up the ancient Vishnu Schist. Almost two billion years old, these rocks are the strangest I’ve ever known. They vibrate with a kind of heavy energy. Gnarled in black and magenta, the rocks sucked us into them and the release from their pull takes much effort. One is silent in the compressed heat of the inner gorge. It’s as if the energy that forged this metamorphic rock were still present, still glowing. The base of an ancient mountain range, these rocks were gashed by the upstart Colorado River in recent times (from a geological perspective). It’s almost like they resent the intrusion. They seem grumpy this morning. Or is it just my legs?

The Clear Creek Trail climbs back up to the Tonto Plateau on the north side of the river. The trail is efficient. Soon we’re above the gorge. We’d heard that the view of the river was spectacular but the schist’s jagged profile is unrelenting. We see nothing but a black wall of rock. The trail is crunchy, all I hear are my footsteps and my breathe. Then I hear myself yelp.

The rocks give way to a panorama of the Colorado river at sunrise. Looking into the sun I see a glistening snake wind its way through the rocks, still cutting its way down into the ancient crust. Normally it is difficult to see exactly how the river carved the canyon. So many other elements have had their hand in the masterpiece. On this morning, at this angle, the river’s work is obvious. On it goes. Water must be the most relentless and patient force in nature.

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.
— Tao Te Ching (translation by Steven Mitchell)

We are tugged by the inner gorge as we try to escape it. We look back as we make our final ascent to the rolling table of the Tonto. Views of the river are surprisingly rare in Grand Canyon. One must relish every glimpse. We leave the river to its work. The urge to keep moving in the canyon onward to new adventures proves greater than the pull of the schist.

Ultimately, the escape is temporary. The heat and exposure of the Tonto soon have us craving for the afternoon shade of the inner gorge. After a few adventurous hours, we descend again, knowing that the rocks have won once more. We cannot escape their allure. They bring us down home again.

There are spots on the Tonto Trail where the path fades to nothing. Experienced guides tell us to follow the path of least resistance, it’s where the Tonto always goes. In the constant heat of this rolling plateau—halfway between Grand Canyon rim and Colorado River—the trail morphs into a sentient being. If it were a person, it would be skinny. Very skinny. I find myself talking aloud to the Tonto. Curiously, it talks back.

I have plenty of water but the heat suddenly gets serious. One minute I’m cruising along and then I stop. I realize that the line between life and death is thinner here than is the trail itself. I take a swig of water. The sun has heated it to bath temperature. One’s eyes calibrate to the faintness of the trail. The tiniest discoloration signifies our direction. The Tonto is whispering and if we don’t listen we could be in trouble. Getting lost out here is not an option. There’s no shade, no water, no other hikers. A short detour would be annoying. Getting profoundly lost would mean dehydration and heat stroke—at best.

The Tonto is a trickster. It lulls you onto its gently, rolling path. In early morning the air is fresh, the day seems promising. A gentle canyon breeze tickles the imagination. We could hike forever, a little voice tells me. The trail meanders like a lazy creek out into the horizon of nowhere. It is impossible to resist. A mile of this gets us hooked. Then, suddenly the nowhere turns into a wash—a deep gash in the plateau. The trail brushes against the wash the way my cat affectionately nudges my legs. I blink as I look down. The scale is hard to reconcile but I figure it’s a thousand feet straight down. The Trickster laughs wheezily—is it the wind or the trail or the heat? I wonder how the Grim Reaper might laugh. We tiptoe past the wash, focusing intensely on the faint trail.

We wind our way back to the rolling plateau, taking a deep, deep breath of relief in the arid air. Those washes are ubiquitous on the Tonto. Every mile or so the trail moves outward toward the rim to circumnavigate another wash. The path of least resistance.

Fresh morning turns quickly to hot desert. I blink and realize where I am. It is utter desolation and it is hot. The heat shimmers in the distance. I blink again to make the bushes stand still. “Another swig of water!” I tell myself. I’m afraid a white unicorn might walk in from the nowhere horizon at any moment, a phenomenon I’d like to avoid. The breeze is gone. The Trickster is silent. The heat changes everything. My step loses its bounce. I start to trip over small rocks. It becomes a kind of goofy dance with the Tonto.

I might be done with the Tonto but it’s hardly done with me. The shimmering horizon gives way to yet another wash. This one requires us to navigate through a field of boulders. My tired legs pound their way through them and up the other side of the wash. The dry bed where water once cut its path makes me even hotter.

On the other side I finally see our destination. An oasis of trees means water, shade, and rest. A cluster of twenty trees looks like a forest out here—a magical, black forest filled with life. My step quickens as I reach the shade. The temperature instantly drops fifteen degrees. I walk into the cluster of trees, my vision becoming clearer. The Tonto has delivered me yet again. The effects of the heat slowly diminish but it’s still very warm in the shade. I just hope there are no unicorns in these woods.

Deep in Grand Canyon the sudden realization hits us. We smell it. We look up and see it. Rain clouds. Early September means monsoon season—we get a taste of it most every year. A sudden ghost wind confirms it. We swallow hard and wait for thunder.

The clouds grumble at first, like a grumpy lion who’s been awakened from his hot-afternoon nap. The ghost wind hits us again, licking us with its cool wetness. The desert sucks the wind dry and stillness returns, but the clouds grow by the minute. Dark, Darker, Black. Stillness always precedes thunder. We wait.

The first crack for real thunder hits us hard. It rattles around the walls of the canyon and echoes for an eternity. The direction of its source is impossible to detect. It arrives in surround sound, omnipresent and foreboding. My dental fillings rattle in fear. I look around for shelter but I’m on a gigantic plateau, the highest object for save a big rock that tumbled from the rim a few eons ago. I shake off visions of my electrified skeleton. Nothing to do but press onward.

The thunder wall rattles again. I wonder if the enormous canyon rim will yield another boulder. Surely there’s one up there waiting for a little nudge—the thunder seems more than adequate for the push. Death by boulder, death by execution. I imagine both are pretty quick ways to gwt to the other side. I hope to myself that the other side is quieter than the racket of this growing storm.

An enormous flash! I see a bolt of fury land somewhere on the North Rim. The gods are angry. The storm is now playing with us, shooting rays of death randomly at our tiny selves. I imagine a white-bearded god flinging his stuff at me, chortling at my frail mortality. I ponder for a moment if I can outrun the oncoming lightning. Three more flashes and I realize the folly of my plan. I figure the closest shelter is straight ahead. We keep moving. A moving target is harder to hit, isn’t it?

A rain drop hits my bald head with a thud. Rain drops aren’t supposed to hurt but this one does. The dew rag that protects my pate from the sun hardly cushions the blow. Ten more hurtful drops follow in rapid succession. Now I can’t count them. The deluge begins. We lower our heads and walk. Walking seems to solve most everything in life. The key is to keep moving. So, we do.

Ten minutes later I can count the drops again. The thunder wall is quiet. A beam of warm sun tickles a spot on its face. The sun dries everything before it has a chance to soak into the rocks and dirt. The impressions of myriad rain drops are all that remain of the storm. We walk back to camp exhilarated. Life never felt so alive.