The Grand Canyon - 70 Million Years in the Making
Breathless!
After riding all day through the blistering late July heat and sun of the Arizona desert, with temperatures consistently between 110 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit, I was motivated.
I had seen the Grand Canyon briefly in my 20’s but the experience was not exactly spectacular - I was in Arizona for business and my host was doing the obligatory 5 minute drive-by stop on the highway - after pulling over at a roadside look-out, my host said “that’s it” and then we were off to that evening’s dinner meetings. I somehow knew I didn’t get the true experience of the Grand Canyon and I had been longing to go back ever since.
So jump forward to late July, 2019…and it’s hot!!! I don’t do well in extreme heat, having suffered heat exhaustion more than once while riding. Knowing I would be travelling through the desert for many days on this trip, I designed my own motorcycle version of Lawrence of Arabian’s desert gear and a system for drenching my clothes in water (while riding) to keep myself from overheating.
It was worth it! As I stood overlooking this most magical place, the hot wind cooling my recently soaked clothing against my skin, I was breathless. Unlike my brief visit years before, there was no hurried host to cut short the experience - I was in the moment, I was here for communion with Mother Nature and Her 70 million year long work of art, and I was totally gobsmacked!
I knew this visit was only going to be for a few of hours because I needed to get to my campsite for that night and push on to the Hoover Dam the next day. I was heartsore as I looked out over the vast canyon and felt it’s calling. I wanted to stay, to explore and to become part of it.
This made me reflect on a comment made to me a couple years prior when I was checking into a KOA in Kentucky. The franchise owner asked me, “Are you a traveler?” I thought to myself, what an odd thing for her to ask…I mean, isn’t everyone checking in here a traveler? What I would later come to understand is that there are those who travel and there are those who are travelers - I came to realize later that I am the later.
As I reflected on my thoughts, I realized that my last several years of traveling by motorcycle had really just been the movie trailer for a feature film that was yet to come, and that I needed to design my life so that my passion for being a traveler becomes an integral part of my existence and not just something that gets some much needed oxygen for a several weeks of vacation every year. That evening, as I rode to my yet to be determined campsite for the night, I was left thinking: how do I graduate from the movie trailer to the feature film? How do I build a life where my day-job lets me spend weeks or months, instead of hours, in an extraordinary place like this…
Stay tuned to see if I figure it out.
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