Thursday, June 05, 2008
Awe: a human experience
Linda Whitlock
Recent columns
From the RoundTable blog
Last Thursday morning my husband and I hiked a couple miles on the Grand Canyon's South Rim. That afternoon, we crammed as many of life's necessities as we could into two plastic bags -- all we'd be allowed to take (for an overnight stay) on the next day's mule ride to Phantom Ranch. Sunday we'd be flying home, so the mule ride would be the final adventure of our vacation.
This visit was our sixth to the Grand Canyon in as many years. In 2003, we finally had the opportunity to fulfill my husband's long-held desire to see the Southwest. We expected it to be a one-time trip. But I fell in love with the sky and the Grand Canyon. He fell in love with just about everything except a few spots that look like staging areas for a fake moon-landing. We've been back every year since.
We've visited some places more than once, but each trip involves something different. Sometimes we visit a new site. Other times we add a new adventure at a place we've already been -- hence this year's mule ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. One trip we took with our daughter, son-in-law and grandkids. Whatever we do, each trip ends at the Grand Canyon's South Rim.
This year's trip began with a drive from the Las Vegas airport to the North Rim. The temperature was 70 degrees or so when we left Las Vegas. By the time we stopped for dinner at Jacob Lake, a 1920s-era restaurant and inn at the entrance to the only road to the North Rim, the temperature had dropped into the 30s and snow flurried around us.
The rest of the drive took us through swirling snow, heavy enough at times to nearly obscure the aspens lining the meadows on each side of the road. Some were winter-bare, their white bark blending into the snow. Others, though, sported pale green leaves. We shivered as we snapped photos and marveled at the beauty of the snow-covered trees and fields.
From the North Rim we drove to Zion National Park. On the way in, we witnessed a herd of bighorn sheep clambering down a cliff. In Arches National Park, we braved gusty winds to get a close-up view of Delicate Arch. Finally, we reached the Grand Canyon's South Rim and soon caught sight of the California condors.
Beautiful. Magnificent. Majestic. Breath-taking. Mere adjectives can't evoke the feelings we get when we encounter such sights. Powerful as they are, photos can't do the job either. As I overheard a man say of the Grand Canyon on one of our early visits, "You can't photograph it. You can't describe it." He was right. Such grandeur can only be experienced -- and only humans can experience it.
In my last column I described five fundamental questions I pose to my Early American lit students. One was, "What distinguishes humans from other species?" In our discussion, students suggested a number of possibilities. One I don't remember them suggesting, and one I hadn't considered myself until recently, is our ability to feel awe.
Bighorn sheep scrambling down the sandstone cliffs in Zion National Park don't feel awe, either at what they're doing or where they're doing it. Neither do the California condors soaring over the Grand Canyon or the tiny chipmunk scurrying through a crack in a wall at Dead Horse Point. Mules toting their burdens to Phantom Ranch don't gaze in wonder at the frothing rapids in the Colorado River below. Indian paintbrush, prickly pear cacti and juniper trees aren't astonished at their ability to survive in a desert environment or to grow through rock.
Only human beings have the capacity to be awed and amazed both by the natural world and by the things they've created themselves.
Natural causes -- flooding, erosion, earthquakes -- may explain the Grand Canyon, the arches in Arches National Park and the cliffs at Zion. A natural cause might explain the instinctive fear of falling that keeps most of us a safe distance from a cliff's edge. Natural causes might even explain the genius that allows human beings to create such wonders as Hoover Dam or the new highway being built high above it.
But if natural causes can account for all those things, and I don't concede they can, the question remains: Whence comes the awe?
Whitlock, a Roanoke Times columnist, is an adjunct English professor who lives in Salem.
