Grand Canyon
Since divinity school, I had kept in touch with the young adjunct professor who taught my favorite class and opened my eyes to a semi-idealistic vision of what I might do vocationally. He was putting together a group of men — a few I knew, most I did not — for a rafting trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and asked if I wanted to join. I jumped at the opportunity to connect with other men who were doing interesting work in different parts of the country, and I invited a few friends of my own. I also planned an additional excursion for myself on the back end of the rafting trip to visit a couple of friends and family members in California and explore the San Francisco Bay Area in particular.
I was again getting restless in my hometown and was dreaming of what it might feel like to live in a more socially tolerant and progressive place. I thought if I could just walk around in a city like San Francisco and its neighborhoods like Haight-Ashbury and the Castro, where no one cares who or what you are, I might begin to ease a bit more into my own skin. I would get to experience what it might feel like not having to guard against some external threat that might judge, shame, expel, or damn me for being fully me — for being gay.
In the last weeks of August, 2005, my friends and I flew to Phoenix and rented a car to drive the rest of the way through Sedona to Flagstaff where we were then shuttled the next morning to Lees Ferry for the launch of our rafting adventure.
Despite several weeks of planning for this trip, I don’t have the greatest memories of my six-day jaunt through the bowels of the renowned canyon. Perhaps it was because my professor, the instigator and coordinator of the trip, wasn’t able to attend due to a freak physical injury a few days before. Maybe it was because I soon realized that the other men on the trip, the ones I was excited to talk with and learn more about their intriguing professions, were not really interested in talking about their work on a trip they understood to be a vacation. Fair enough. It could have been that I was working too hard to appreciate the beauty, novelty, and significance of the multi-million-year-old chasm, attempting to raise my level of enthusiasm to the extent I imagined was expected by all bucket listers who oohed and aahed at such a natural wonder. Yet most likely, I lacked zeal because there was something more going on in the viscera cavities and anatomy of my own physical structure. More on this in next week’s post.
On the last day of the trip we hiked the 9.7 miles out of the canyon, from the river up to the South Rim of the canyon on the trail called Bright Angel. I knew the hike was going to be strenuous. We were prepared for that by our guide company which emphasized even before our registration the need to take seriously the elevation increase of more than 4500’ feet, taking anywhere from six to nine hours to complete, in temperatures that could reach 110 degrees during the month we would be there. I had intentionally stepped up my exercise routine months before our trip, walking, running, and hiking our local trails, in an effort to be in sufficient shape for our trip, specifically the trek at the end.
All in all, I felt pretty good throughout the climb, consciously taking the time to savor many of the views of the mighty canyon from the switchbacks of the Bright Angel. I remembered the counsel from our guides, or perhaps from one of my more experienced hiking buddies, an Eagle Scout, who encouraged us to drink liquids even before we felt thirsty as a means to stay hydrated in the dry heat. I was doing this and feeling so good in fact, that halfway up I volunteered to trade my comfortable fitting back pack for a friend’s bulky duffel with no shoulder straps in an effort to ease his struggle of making it up and out of the canyon. It was about this time, as we were now passing others hiking down the canyon, that we began hearing about a massive storm that was pummeling New Orleans with torrential winds and flooding rains.
*Thanks for reading and/or listening. Continue to next post The Storm. To read from the beginning please go to Why I'm Writing.
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