Unfamiliar Geologies
My Grand Canyon Trip illuminated for me the edges of my understanding. Precipices all around me where my knowledge breaks down.
Halfway between the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River at its bottom, I stood transfixed by the unforgiving enormity of the red cliffs that had just appeared below me. I now stood on their edge, slightly confused, full of awe. This was not my first backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon, but it was my first to plumb the deepest parts—relief of nearly 5,000 ft.
The canyon, gray, brushy, and deep but passable, had suddenly disappeared, and where it should have been, there was now an utterly incomprehensible red gash. My confusion came primarily from not understanding if the earth had fallen away or if the earth on which I had been walking was less trustworthy than I had given it credit for, and that the cliffs below me were the real way of things.
I somehow couldn’t square these ideas as belonging to the same reality. Geology has a way of doing that. Forcing the observer to consider multiple realities, vantages, umwelts.