Terry Traveler – Grand Canyon

Fellow travelers of the great wide world, it is I, Terry Traveler, here to tell you of another wonderful journey I took around this giant rotating orb of water and stone, plant and mineral, peoples being peoples.

My favorite spot in the whole of the world is no more than 3 feet wide. It is the perfect spot to stop, to look, to bask in warmth and light. It is merely a dusty rock, found amongst the tourists and hot dog stands of the rocky ledge of a canyon, great and wide. 

It was one of my earliest expeditions, when my traveling companions made all the arrangements and I was left to read Highlights magazine. After days of driving cross country, we arrived at sunset to peer at what I had imagined would be a giant hole in the ground. How wrong I was.

I had never seen anything so vast- in all directions it spilled forth from that cliff where I stood shocked, nervous and aware. My eyes, young indeed, could not comprehend all the wonders at once. 

How grand was this canyon, with the birds soaring and the winds singing and the colors saturating every rod and cone. I closed my eyes and saw the colors burnt into my retinas. I felt like I was standing on the edge of the earth and my knees give way. I sat on that rock and in doing so, felt akin to all that surrounded me, and in that moment, claimed my most favorite spot in the whole wide world.

Sitting near that ledge, on a rock at the end of the world, I saw bugs crawling in the dirt, weaving along the sides of rocks- like cliff hangers without safety ropes. It wasn’t the end of the world, I realized, it was just the beginning. Right there, in that three foot patch of dirt, was a perfect ecosystem where bugs and snakes and birds and bats and fish and coyotes and tourists and hot dog vendors lived in harmony, not fear, of the ledge. What a beautiful dance, what a perfect spot to view the whole of the great wide world.

Fellow travelers, it is the memory of that singular experience that drives me onward, seeking out new views and vistas, new life and new civilizations, those bold places I’ve never gone before. This is Terry Traveler saying, this Spring Break, may you seek the same.

Terry Traveller
Email: terry@discoveradel.com
Facebook: DiscoverAdel.TerryTraveller