The Canyon Series:
The Earth's surface, crudely put, is a composite of layer upon layer of rock and time. We spend most of our lives rolling along its friendly surface, oblivious to its hard core.
During a hiking trip deep into the base of The Grand Canyon and Mt. Zion National Park, I got to experience a small part of the Earth's interior spaces.
After 6 hours of navigating down a hairline trail with treacherous vertical drops and complicated switchbacks, I was overwhelmed by the sheer mass of angry walls engulfing my slow decent. A true cathedral of unforgiving cliff face surrounded me. Each layer of barren rock represents thousands -to hundreds of thousands of years of the Earth's hidden history. Many thousands of these years we have studied. Many thousand we are still discovering, continually hoping to, piece by piece, unearth the story of our planet's ancient biography. Many thousands of years, still, have been and eventually will be -all forgotten. Despite the 106 degree heat, I was chilled by this momentary impression of the weight of so much loss. From the cheerfully bright trail signs with their clean international graphics, to the gruesome location of a bare boned carcass 1000 ft. just –out- of- reach! below you, kind reminders are everywhere in the Canyon that Death could, very well, be gleefully breathing right over your shoulder with a backpack on it.
Once safely reaching the Valley of the Canyon, life made its gentle reappearance. Water and tender trees littered the dust terrain. I found myself in a place where time was no longer linked to a cruel linear narrative with a cloaked skeleton at the end of it, but in a place where time was, in fact, happening simultaneously, quietly all around her. I felt peace, for one moment, that Life did not end with Death but with new Life in a spiral continuum which stretched back across itself and joyously went in all directions.
This series is, in part, a tribute to the neglected world that lies silently, just beneath the surface and quietly contributes to building the whole. And, in part, a celebration of the undefeatable feminine nature of this place we all call home.
 |
|||||||||||