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Out of the Blue
When fists flew on the San Juan Special
Only the strongest flight attendants survived this legendary New York-Puerto Rico flight.
By Elliott Neal Hester
[08/03/99]

Conquering Half Dome -- and the fear of falling
When a simple hike turns into a paralyzing ascent, a father has to overcome his terror.
By Don George
[07/31/99]

Wanderlust
Thais that bind
One minute she's giving me a mean massage, the next she wants to steal me away on her motor scooter.
By Zona Sage
[07/30/99]

Travel Advisor
I'm going to Disney World
Our expert advises readers on the best Disney packages, the cheapest Tokyo-London flights and finding that authentic tamale south of the border.
By Donald D. Groff
[07/29/99]

Out of Africa
Why do so many travel books about the continent start the same way?
By Wendy Belcher
[07/28/99]

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We flew to Phoenix, overnighted at an airport hotel, then drove through cacti and brush scrub country toward the canyon. The map showed a seductive trail of names that resonated with Old West history and lore -- Tombstone, Yuma, Jerome, Apache and Navajo and Hopi reservations -- but we had only a day and a couple of nights, so we headed straight for the Oldest West.

After Flagstaff we turned onto Route 180 and the landscape began to change. Before long we were traveling through high thick pine forests and then dazzling stretches of white aspen. Far to our right a massive red-rock mountain towered into the sky, but nothing gave any indication whatsoever that we were approaching one of the world's most spectacular depths.

We reached the canyon village just before sunset and hurried through check-in, then parked our car at the hotel and raced to the rim. When we got there, about half the canyon was already in shadow and showed a somber palette of olive and amber. The other half, still spotlit in the sun's slanting rays, showed rust and moss and leather, infinite gradations of red and green and brown.

Travelers' Tales Guides: Grand Canyon Travelers' Tales, Inc. Nonfiction 282 pages

This is the thing about the Grand Canyon -- it defies not just description; it actually defies perception, apprehension. It's so vast, so overwhelming, that you tend to go into brain-lock when you see it.

My kids' eyes grew wide at their first view, and they were speechless for a few moments, but your understanding of the Grand Canyon is only as vast as the life-mirror you bring to it. Jeremy, our 8-year-old, was done with the sight pretty quickly; before long he was asking if we could go eat now.

Jenny, four years older, took much more of the canyon into her -- she seemed right on the delicate edge of wanting to ask if we could go eat now and wanting to linger longer and longer and longer, trying to absorb the undulations of color and earth and air before her.

Kuniko and I could have stood for hours, watching the subtle changes of tint and light and shade, the occasional birds swoop through the sky, the first stars prick the chasm of night.

We lingered awhile, then retired to the hotel cafeteria for spaghetti, hot chocolate and wine.

That night I lay awake, thinking about the canyon, how it renders our brains and our imaginations so puny, so futile. At best we can understand only a tiny corner, a patch, of the place; in terms of geologic time, in terms of human history, in terms of width and depth -- whatever scale you choose, the canyon runs off the chart.

That is when I wish I'd had a book that just came out last week, the Travelers' Tales guide to the Grand Canyon, subtitled "True Stories of Life Below the Rim."

Given the overwhelming nature of the subject, this is an especially impressive anthology that does an amazing job capturing the multiple facets of the canyon's history and special allure. Within these pages you can explore mysterious side canyons and shamans' galleries, bounce and bump over death-defying rapids and teeter on heart-straining cliff-edge trails. You'll meet the wildlife of the canyon -- ravens and hawks and crows, scorpions and mountain lions and snakes, tamarisk and monkey flower and maidenhair fern -- and the spirits that live there, too. You'll also get a sense of the misguided mortal encroachments that can threaten even so extraordinary a planetary treasure.

As with most Travelers' Tales collections, there are hits and misses in this book. But the misses are few and some of the hits are literature of the highest quality -- such as Edward Abbey's unforgettable tale of 35 days of madness and magic on a solo stay in the depths of Havasu Canyon; or Colin Fletcher's subtle evocation of his own spiritual awakenings as he walked through the canyon; or Barry Lopez's spine-tingling, mind-thrilling description of a rafting odyssey through the canyon, one of the finest pieces of writing I have read in a long, long time.

Next page | You have to get into the canyon to really appreciate it