About this time every year Sandra makes a pilgrimage to the east coast to visit family and friends. I am left free as a bird and usually bored stiff with nothing to do and 2 weeks to do it. This year I decided to use the time pursuing volunteer work for next summer.
Since we have been together, about 4 years now, we have shared and satisfied our wanderlust volunteering in Alaska, Nebraska, Arizona,Texas, and of course Bosque del Apache here in New Mexico where we met...but that's another story. Anyway, I decided I would use the time for a road trip up to some beautiful places we had not seen yet and mapped out a trip to Utah with stops at Zion, Bryce Canyon Lands and whatever else on the way of interest. My plan was to leave a resume with Volunteer
Coordinators at these spots for work beginning after our winter at Bosque and one month assignment at White Sands.
After delivering Sandra to the airport, I left Albuquerque headed for Grand Canyon on a beautiful sunny morning with a sky full of balloons overhead, to pay homage to what I think is the most beautiful, scenic, quiet spot I have ever been to.
Shoshone Point is an almost secret spot on the south rim. Secret because once you've seen it, you jealously want to guard it from the average tourist. Although open to the public, it probably gets 10-20 visitors a day because you have to (shudder) walk a mile through the woods to get there. But when the trees end you are standing on the edge of the world in complete silence with a thread of the Colorado river visible a mile below and the occasional Condor gliding by on a rising thermal. This is where I hope I am scattered to spend eternity. But not yet! Today I was looking for the solitude found here while still alive and breathing.
To my enormous disappointment, I met a lady on her way out who said, "must be a wedding or something goin' on, there's about 10 cars passed me by heading in". I continued on in anger ready to confront these interlopers to my private corner of the Canyon. Then ahead I saw a small trailer with the words Superstition Search and Rescue on the side. My anger turned to guilt as I figured somebody had fallen over the edge. Also there was that old spark of excitement from my years of work with the Sierra Madre Search and Rescue team back in California long ago.
As I approached the canyon it was obvious from all the ropes and pulley systems and people in harness and hard hats peering into the abyss, that some kind of rescue or recovery was in progress. It was a recovery, but not what I expected. Some bozo, or in this case group of bozos had, with great effort, carried an iron picnic table and benches weighing hundreds of pounds to the edge and pushed it about 300 feet into the canyon where it snagged on a branch. My first evil thought was I hope they didn't let go. What kind of thinking drives so called humans to this kind of act? It's not spur of the moment, they obviously planned to drag it there with no one around and, I guess, get their kicks for about 10 seconds watching it fall, meanwhile destroying the view for all future visitors.
But that's not how it played out. This dedicated group of volunteers, professionals in all aspects of mountaineering from what I could observe, drove up from southern Arizona to spend a weekend figuring how to get it back out. I talked with some of them, men and women ranging in age from 20's through 60's and recalled the pride I felt being part of such a team. Today it was a table rescue, more of a practice run. Next time it might be a child. Check out and support Mountain (and desert!) rescue teams in your area. They do good things.
Oh yeah, the rest of the trip? It started to rain, rained all the way to Bryce Canyon, spent 6 hours in freezing weather in a leaky tent, 6 more in the car trying to sleep, turned to snow, headed back (in rain) through Flagstaff skirting 3 tornadoes, and home to warm, sunny, New Mexico where I'm staying a while.