A DAY ON BRIGHT ANGEL

We arrived at Grand Canyon National Park at night. Away from the lights that normally compromise cosmic visibility, you could see stars in the millions. The canyon lay barely half a mile from the lodge, but under the cover of darkness the leviathan was holding its secrets. Full of hikers, the lodge shut down early, not much past nine. I slept well.

Morning. The cafeteria had no coffee. Something had gone wrong with a delivery. Henrietta, in her beret and green uniform, went from table to table, waving her hands and frantically explaining that the vendor had delivered beans that the staff were having to grind by hand. Like the other guests, I was outraged. This wasn’t how vacation was supposed to go. Coffee, for me, is the elixir of life. Eventually, however, the staff muddled through, and I was able to caffeinate myself before setting out.

The walk from the lodge to the South Rim of the canyon was over flat ground, a scrubby, gravelly, unexceptional Arizonan landscape. A huge elk munched lazily from a bush in the lodge gardens.

So far the morning’s weather was glorious. The sky was an unbroken blue. On the drive from Sedona to the Grand Canyon I’d made a habit of scanning the skies periodically (perhaps obsessively) for outstretched black wings. Spying a California condor in the wild was a primary reason I was here, and Bob, my travel companion, had grown interested in the huge, mysterious birds as well. It was on my bucket list. No black feathers, however, ruffled the morning sky.

And then: The canyon exploded into view. I mean—suddenly it’s just there, and in the wee breath of a second my entire perception of the planet shifted. Raised in mild Maryland and living in crowded, woodsy Northern Virginia, I’d seen the Grand Canyon innumerable times in photographs and movies and paintings, but nothing had actually prepared me for my first in-person glimpse. The sheer size, and the beauty, are a lot to process. I felt the canyon’s immensity physically: My knees threatened to buckle and I had to lean on the fence at the edge.

Briefly, some facts. A creation of time, wind, and water, the Grand Canyon, per Wikipedia, is about 280 miles long, 18 miles wide at its widest point, and reaches more than a mile in depth. Age estimates are all over the place, from six million to seventy million years, because, of course, different formations have different ages. But it’s old.

Reading the descriptions at the trailhead, we settled on the Bright Angel Trail. Billed as moderate, it seemed the most logical choice. Later, back at home, I found material that said Bright Angel was actually difficult and recommended for more experienced hikers. That characterization seems more apt.

I had my cap (with condor insignia on the bill), my hiking boots, and my small backpack with some water and granola bars, so I thought I was reasonably well prepared for a day out at the canyon. I had my Galaxy, but the reception would be dicey, so it was mainly for the camera. Two things I hadn’t factored in were vertigo and altitude.

Vertigo. The trail wasn’t wide, and the abrupt drop-off was terrifying; in fact, in certain places barely two feet lay between me and, well, death. My brain lamented the absence of a railing. There would be no surviving a slip over the edge. I wasn’t dizzy exactly, but my body definitely went a little wonky from the nearness of the gulf, and right away I learned to hug the canyon wall as I descended. There would be no scanning the skies for condors while I was in motion; looking up or out while I was standing made me feel wobbly. I would have to keep my eyes on the ground in front of me. Bob doesn’t have issues with vertigo, and I waved him on when he paused ahead of me. I was going to go at my own pace, period. The trail material was loose underfoot in places, and my heart jumped every time my soles slid.

The weather was pleasant, dry, windless. This was good, because I couldn’t keep my brain from inserting scenarios of catastrophe in my stream of thought, such as trying to get back up a muddy trail with the rain coming down in force. With a history of breaking bones, I couldn’t help but fixate on how any rescuers would pry me off Bright Angel if the worst happened. By helo? How long might I have to wait, possibly in excruciating pain?

There were a fair number of hikers on Bright Angel. I moved aside to let them pass, downhill and especially back up later. A number of them were older, and I was a little embarrassed at my slowness, but they looked like well-seasoned hikers. They had serious boots and used poles.

I may, however, be misleading you a little. Despite these annoyances, and being realistic about the dangers, I was intoxicated with the place. The vista was so far from my everyday experience that I may as well have ventured onto an extrasolar planet. The near infinite variations of color in the skirted layers of the rock; the twisted trees and succulents that gained a stubborn foothold in difficult terrain; the river at the canyon bottom, golden with mud from recent rains. Going down and coming back up, I found places to pause, sit, sip water, be amazed, and simply savor the moment in time.

And when I wasn’t on my feet in motion, I watched the—endless—skies.

As a small kid, I had a set of big-print encyclopedias with shiny covers and lots of pictures. In the right-hand corner of one page (I can still see it) was a photograph of an Andean condor perched on a rock high up in the neighborhood of the sky. That picture just captured my imagination, and I peppered my dad with questions about condors (he didn’t know very much, except that they were big and ate dead things). Inspired by the condor’s image, I went through a long period as a kid of fascination with birds of prey—eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, I read about them zealously and wrote stories about them for school and for my relatives. At Brentano’s in Wheaton Plaza, while waiting for my parents to finish their own shopping, I flipped through the oversize books on birds of prey, looking at (memorizing) the pictures. But the condor was always my favorite. When we drove cross-country when I was seven, we came near the Sierra Nevadas, and I remember putting my head out the car window to scan the far-off cloudy peaks for circling condors (I didn’t see any).

Briefly, again, some facts . . . California condors can have a wingspan of up to ten feet, and their pinions stretch out like black witch-fingers when they fly. They glide aloft on thermal currents and can range hundreds of miles in a day as they patrol for food. They live a long time (for birds), estimated up to eighty years, mate for life, breed slowly, and raise their chicks jointly and lovingly in remote caves on cliff walls or the hollows of giant trees. Also, they’re smart; people who have interacted with condors estimate their intelligence to be similar to that of a large dog. For condor seekers, the white triangular patches on the undersides of their wings distinguish them from turkey vultures, which can also get quite big.

For tens of thousands of years of prehistory, condors towed their ragged shadows across North America. Then Europeans arrived with their guns. By 1987, the last remaining California condors in the wild were trapped and taken in, and a decades-long captive breeding program began. Fortunately, it’s been successful. Now these big birds can be seen in a number of wild places, including the Grand Canyon and Big Sur; if, that is, you’re lucky enough to catch sight of one.

Other wild creatures were in evidence around Bright Angel, of course. There were plenty of turkey vultures in the canyon skies. And ravens. The shiny-feathered black corvids sat on the walls along the canyon rim, quite unruffled by the proximity of tourists. (I have a photograph of one specimen, who waited calmly as I took the picture.) Back at the trailhead the display on wildlife cautioned us not to interact with the Grand Canyon squirrels. When I paused on the trail to sit and eat my granola bar, the one that nosed brazenly around my boots was big. I tried to dig out the phone and snap a picture, but once the fellow realized I wasn’t going to offer food, he was done with me and left. A trio of big horn sheep crossed the trail, coming within just a few feet, unconcerned with my presence, their perfect hooves finding purchase over the loose ground, as astute and skillful in this (to me) alien environment as octopi are in the deep.

Bob was waiting for me at the three-mile resthouse. We spent some time there, then he decided to continue down a little farther, but I was ready to go back up.

Going back up was a whole new ball game. I mentioned altitude earlier. On the return half of my Bright Angel foray, it became especially obvious that I should have waited at least a day to acclimatize. In preparation for this trip, I’d spent a lot of time on the aerobic equipment in my building’s gym, I’d done many hikes, and I’d walked a few particularly steep hills in Arlington over and over and over. I thought I’d been pretty thorough. It quickly became obvious that I might as well have spent the time playing Tiddlywinks.

The return leg of Bright Angel is largely a series of steep switchbacks, and I took my time. Climbing the trail at an unaccustomed altitude, I had to stop frequently to catch my breath, although the vertigo was (slightly) less problematic going uphill. Furthermore, the afternoon was drawing down, shadows were growing, and the last thing I wanted was to be on a narrow canyon trail in the dark. But, still, I told myself to take it as slowly as need be, pausing to sit and rest as often as I felt inclined. It was a long, long haul. And despite the care I’d taken to condition myself, my heart was thudding from the exertion in the thinner air in a way I didn’t care for. I’m not religious, but I felt it prudent to—just in case—bargain a little with God: You get me back up to the top and I’ll . . . well, I didn’t know what to promise, so . . . Just get me through this, please.

At last the top of the trail was in sight, and I slogged the final portion heavily but proudly. Done. I sank down on a bench at the trailhead. The cell phone rang—it was Bob. Where are you? Can you meet me at such and such? I’ll wait for you at . . . Not on your life, I said, you come to me. I’m not moving. We were both exhausted and talking over each other at cross-purposes, and the connection was spotty. I thought he was calling from some lower point on Bright Angel, but he was actually only a short distance away. I looked up.

I put the phone down. There she was, impossibly high overhead, riding the thermals that rose from the canyon floor. Around the trailhead, people were looking up, exclaiming, pointing. Wings extended, wind-ruffled pinions spread against eternity, out on her long day’s patrol from the heavens, the condor was directly above me—then she wasn’t. The air bore her along swiftly, but I was able to verify the white underpatch. She banked, then sped out over the canyon, dwindling, disappearing, gone.

It was a brief moment, but it was sublime.

Ron Teeter retired a few years ago from a career as a technical writer and editor in various fields, including pharmacy, space life sciences, and psychology. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, United States, and is using his gift of time to pursue the creative nonfiction and fiction he’d always wanted to write.