A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon

by Kevin Fedarko

“I saw that by going down into that huge fissure in the face of the earth, deep into the space and the silence and the solitude, I might come as close as we can at present to moving back and down through the smooth and apparently impenetrable face of time,”

Grua’s speed run also seemed to embrace a set of larger themes tied to the complexities and contradictions of the canyon: its beauty, its brutality, and the power it can wield over those who love it most deeply.

In Grua’s mind, this was more than a minor discrepancy. By confining himself to the park, the “man who walked through time” had omitted almost two-thirds of the canyon.

How much did you truly know about the canyon if all you knew was the river? I wondered. What about the rest of this place—the other 99 percent?

“Almost everywhere you look, with every step you take, the canyon seems intent on pulling you further into the past,”

All of this means that every facet of the land is alive and responsive, like the strings of an instrument, to a set of harmonics that include—but also expand far beyond—human needs and hopes and longings. Without exception, each tribe regards the canyon as a place of reverence, a kind of open-air cathedral whose interior is consecrated by memory and stories and the weight of time. For all of these societies, the chasm is hallowed ground, an aboriginal holy land.

She nodded. “This is a special place, a holy place without a roof, because it’s the place where people’s spirits return after they’ve passed on.” She gestured down toward the Confluence. “My father is here and my mother, my uncles, my father’s parents, and my mother’s mother, who I never met. Even though their earthly remains are in their graves in Tuba City, this is where their spirits are, and when I come out here, I can hear them, the people who have come before me.”

“deeply woven into our spirit, our heritage, and our culture.”

I would never find a way to fully reconcile my admiration for the Hualapai’s achievements with my dismay over the manner in which the tribe’s prosperity and security are now yoked to a system of air tours that inflicts such profound damage on the integrity of the canyon as a living entity.

he had faith that even the parts of that world that are ugly will one day heal.