With a brief respite between dreary winter storms, I gathered up my gear on a Sunday morning and made a ramble down Highway 89 en route to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. The skies were packed with mischievous yet lethargic-moving clouds, making it hard to decipher their plot. As I drove, they would occasionally spit variations of snow at my windshield but never seemed to have enough inertia to let loose their storm. Little did they know, they had created the dispiriting, moody-toned skies I hoped for.
About halfway there, I was finally able to locate the elderly multi-trunked limbless juniper tree I had been searching for on a place called Deadman Flats. The juniper trunks are painted with white Hopi faces, black eyes, and mouths and accented with red markings. They are eery-looking and are known as the Wupatki Spirit Totems. They are adorned with coins, jewelry, and personal relics from travelers passing by. However, I am unsure that the people leaving offerings genuinely know of their bedeviled past.
The stories go as follows
- The evil god of death named Maasaw approaches the Hopi Indians on their land; they confront the hideous stranger covered with blood and loathsomeness. He tells them, "Look in the valleys, the rocks, and the woods, and you will find my footsteps there.'"
- A Navajo elder recanted one incident. A Navajo man, woman, and boy are herding horses across the top of Deadman Flat. They are on a road that leads through a valley between the hills, and the woman in the lead spied a group of Mexican bandits guided by local Hopi scouts. The boy launched arrows off of his horse, killing several men. The men quickly turned about, leaving their dead for the name that depicts the area among the old juniper trees.
- A man trying to make it across the high plains froze to death, lying next to the tree more than a hundred years ago.
- A cowboy from the CO Bar ranch found a man lying beneath the trunks, bloodied and stabbed to death.
- A man got mad at his horse, took out his gun, and shot it; after realizing what he had done, he shot himself.
Regardless of their heinous stories, they are all about a leading evil spirit of death, which resides at the base of the Wupatki Spirit Totem. Oddly, a similar face painting is found in the Grand Canyon Desert View Watchtower (see below), painted by Hopi artist Fred Kabote. All of the paintings have descriptions – except for that one.
Keeping these thoughts in mind, I knew I was in for a wicked day of adventure under malicious skies along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Dare I venture too close to the edge this day?
I have been to GC many times; as I arrived at the first viewpoint, my mind rid itself of previous hanging thoughts as I was transformed by what lay in front of me. I walked out to the frozen edge, peered out, and pondered how to sum up such a place of grandeur. How would one define the Grand Canyon in a descriptive phrase? I considered it and was able to sum it all up to just one word:
Extreme!
—or have I?
Yes, its size would be on the forefront of the word extreme as the immense chasm measures 277 miles long and 6,000 feet deep. The Canyon's width from the South Rim Village to the North Rim is 10 miles across, though, in places, it is as much as 18 miles wide. That's Extreme!
Approximately 14,000 cubic feet of water flows every second through the Canyon, averaging 800 million gallons of water every hour. So how much is that? It's 1,904 square miles of water. Or, for a better image, filling the Canyon with water would take 1.5 quadrillion gallons of water. If you poured all the river water on Earth into the Grand Canyon, it would still only be about half full. That's Extreme!
It took an estimated five million years to carve the Canyon to where it stands today. Thats Extreme!
Temperature fluctuation through the year varies from -22 on the north rim during winter to 120 at Phantom Ranch in the summer. A 140-degree swing, yeah, that's Extreme!
But the most extreme thing to me about the Canyon is the variations of colors and how it constantly shifts throughout the day.
Its colorful grandeur is due to its thousands of ascending layers of strata with hues ranging from the top layer of buff and gray, descending to lower depths of brown, slate-gray, and violet. It continues to encompass a rainbow of colors that vary from Alizarin Crimson, Aquamarine, Cerulean, Carnelian, and Coral. Emerald, Ebony, Indigo. Lavender, Maroon, Magenta to Sienna, Vermilion, and Violet. Yes, it's an Extreme array of colors.
The Grand Canyon is a bedazzling variation of colors that change before your eyes with the lengthening or shortening of light throughout the day or, even better, by a quick-moving billow of cumulus clouds overhead. There are so many variations of quickly changing colors that you can't fully comprehend the Extreme realism of it all.
Well, once you've been in the Canyon and once you've sort of fallen in love with it, it never ends... it's always been a fascinating place to me, in fact I've often said that if I ever had a mistress it would be the Grand Canyon. - Barry Goldwater
A Tip for visiting the Grand Canyon
I have visited the Grand Canyon many times and can tell you the best route is starting from the east and working your way west along the rim. This way, you are only making right-hand turns into and out of the pull-off viewpoints and never need to cross traffic. Starting in Flagstaff, proceed to Highway 89 on the way to Cameron. At the first big roundabout, before you get to Cameron, take Highway 64 west, and you are on your way to adventure via Desert View Dr.
Enjoy your experience along the Rim, and when finished, you will come to the Grand Canyon Village on the Rim. Explore this area, its historical hotel and shops. Then, continue on 64 south to Williams and hop on Interstate 40 east back to Flagstaff, completing a roughly 200-mile loop.
This is an easy day trip, with plenty of time to enjoy the sights from every viewpoint. I recommend having a picnic as a few areas are along the route. There are also food options at the park's beginning and the end in the village at the famed El Tovar Hotel. FYI, The hotel name El Tovar is in honor of the Spanish explorer Pedro de Tobar, who led the first expedition into Hopi-Indian country in 1540.