Grand Canyon

Some experiences defy language, even decades later. My first glimpse of the Grand Canyon as a teenager remains one of those moments where words—then and now—feel utterly inadequate.

I remember the approach, how everything seemed ordinary until it wasn't. One moment we were just driving through typical desert landscape, and the next—standing at the rim—the world suddenly dropped away into this impossibly vast void of colored layers and shadow. My teenage brain, normally bubbling with opinions and reactions for everything, simply went quiet.

What strikes me now, looking back from adulthood, is how the Grand Canyon represents one of the first times I encountered something too immense to process. As teenagers, we think we understand the world and its scale. The Grand Canyon humbles that notion instantly. I recall trying to photograph it, then realizing with frustration that no camera—especially not the simple one I had in those pre-digital days—could possibly capture what my eyes were seeing..

Now, decades later, I can recognize that moment at the canyon's edge as one of those pivotal experiences that subtly reshape you. It introduced my teenage self to the concept of sublime—beauty so vast it borders on terrifying. It was perhaps my first encounter with the humbling realization of my own smallness against geological time.

Some places enter your consciousness and never really leave. The Grand Canyon is one of those places—a memory that hasn't dimmed with age, even if the words to describe it remain just as elusive now as they were then.