Epic Trip Out West, Day Fifty-Three: Sunrise

May 28th

Not three hours after I fell asleep, I heard someone banging on the door and realized it was a cop throwing us out of the parking lot… and then I woke up. The trailer was dark, the wind blowing ominously outside. Jack was silent, which meant no one was nearby, so I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep. I had little luck until about 4:15… and we got up at 4:30 to see another daily phenomenon that we might not see again for a long time: sunrise on the Canyons.

Amanda has an amazing wake-up time: from fast asleep in bed to driving with perfect coherency took her less than two minutes. Groggy and glad I wasn’t driving, I sat in the passenger’s seat and zoned out. Fortunately, because of where we’d parked, the entrance was only a couple miles away. We ended up driving to a lookout called Grandview Point, which we only had to share with a handful of visitors. Amanda walked Jack while I found a slab to sit on, bundled up against the nighttime chill, and watch the flaxen sky for the reappearance of the sun. 

As I sat, I realized this was my last good view of the Canyon. Amanda was ready to hit the road again, and quite frankly, so was I: there were friends to see before I got home, and my time out west was winding down. The Canyon will always be there, and perhaps when I return my mind will be stronger, rebuilt from the sense of scale that has shattered my mind several times since I’ve been out west. In the meantime, I gazed out at the horizon, and felt the nippy breeze on my face, and waited for the sun.

The indigo nighttime retreated back into the canyons as the light grew stronger, and I watched it with eyesight that sometimes blurred with tiredness. But at last, gold overtook the blue and the sun leaped into the sky with a flood of vivid light. The light shook off the chill of the night and the wind felt warmer, as if to say to me, “Godspeed. Don’t worry, you’ll be back.”

And so I said goodbye to the Grand Canyon, and within the hour we had hit the road, with music blasting through the speakers, but barely to be heard over the sound and the rattle of the wind, one last parting shot from Arizona’s wonder of the world.

~Lisa Shafter