The Fires of Our Time

"The mountains, and the steady hills, the rivers, and the rocks, and all the everlasting broods that fill the landscape with a silent awe, dreams of mountains, as in their sleep, they brood on things eternal, keep a mute companionship with me." - William Wordsworth

The wind spun down off the Vermillion Cliffs and into the ancient rivulets of the sandstone and soft shale. Along Arizona Highway 89a, the heat seemed to accelerate the gusts as they rose up from along the roadside. There were invisible hands grabbing at the motorcycles, tugging the windscreens and pushing them sideways, hammering at our shoulders, turning a ride into a fight. The sky was Arizona blue, though, and we were hopeful that after we crossed the high bridge over the Colorado River at Marble Canyon, the climb out to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon would ease our route of travel. The air stayed hot, though, and blasted us as if weaponized by unnatural forces.

The road rose beyond the desert and twisted through forests of ponderosa pines and conifers scattered among the white aspen trunks. The temperature dropped twenty degrees in the first ten miles at elevation, and the great ponderosas took dominion over the scenery. High country on the Kaibab Plateau was starkly different from the more desiccated stretches of the tableland we had just transited at 80 miles an hour. Even passing through the stands of trees at highway speed, the tangy scent of pine filled the air and there was the unsettling feeling we had transitioned to another climate in an unknown location. The contrast from the desert reaches to the east was startling and almost incomprehensible.

We turned the bikes south at Jacob Lake and pointed to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Shaw and I were on a side trip of our 3400-mile motorcycle tour. I decided we had time and that he needed to stand before the canyon, which he had never seen in 46 years of living. We had been on the road in the American West for eight days, and after riding through Monument Valley, we concluded we were too close for him to miss one of the world’s great natural wonders. Shaw had just retired from the Army and wanted a bit of adventure before settling back into civilian life and seeking new employment. A half century earlier, I had taken my first trip to the canyon with another friend, who was from my hometown up in Michigan, and was also just out of the military. A piece inside of him had seemed broken after Vietnam and I thought a hitchhiking trip to the Grand Canyon, and a rim-to-rim hike, might be curative of his invisible ailments, and even my tortured discontent over the war. That first visit launched my compulsion to keep returning to the canyon.

“How many times did you say you’ve been there?” Shaw asked me on the helmet intercom.

“Not sure. A lot. Maybe twenty or more. I know I’ve done four rim-to-rim hikes and two rim-to-rim runs, and I never get tired of being there. You see something new and beautiful every trip, especially down on the river.”

“Wish I had the time, but I’m glad I’m gonna at least see it.”

“Me, too, buddy. Me, too, and that I get to show it to ya.”

There is no point in trying to describe the Grand Canyon. Words are rendered meaningless by the vision. No scenery more completely speaks to a human yearning for wonder and natural beauty. Shaw and I had, unfortunately, little time and needed to make Flagstaff by dark. Phone pics and quick videos were snatched at the tourist overlooks and we went inside the lodge for lunch, a magnificent structure of stone and timber set on the edge of the canyon walls. The sunroom and terrace offer stunning views and the great hall with a soaring ceiling serves as the restaurant. We ordered lunch and I became slightly emotional in the surroundings over my bowl of elk chili.

(Below is a picture I took of the view of the Grand Canyon from the North Rim Lodge)

“This place was the setting for a huge moment in my life,” I told Shaw. “When my buddy Butch and I came here the first time, we were totally unprepared with nylon backpacks on aluminum frames, no tent, heavy cotton sleeping bags, and not enough food.”

“Thought you said you hiked across?” he asked. “You ran out of food?”

“Yeah, after the first day. We hiked up Bright Angel Trail with nothing to eat and when we got up here to the North Rim, we came inside this lodge and spent most of our remaining money on a meal that would’ve ended starvation for a small town. I think we ate three loaves of bread before our orders reached the table.”

Fluttering bands of sunlight faded between the limbs of the ponderosas that day and there was a nice breeze of dry Kaibab air. Butch and I were almost staggering with hunger when we stepped off the trail. After eating, he waited in the lodge for me to find a pay phone and call my mother and let her know I was still alive out on the American road, a conversation I will never forget.

“I was so worried, son, and I’m relieved to hear from you. But now you need to go tell Butch his mother died.”

“What? Oh god. His dad didn’t…..”

“No, she had a heart attack. Poor thing, worked two shifts every day since they got to America. It’s a wonder she lasted this long.”

“Yeah, I suppose. Ma, I have no idea how long it will take us to hitch home and we don’t have money for bus tickets.”

“I know, son, but Butch’s brother said that he would send you both money by Western Union to rent a car and drive home. That’ll be faster than busses could get you here.”

“Ok, I guess I better go tell Butch. We’ll probably see you in a few days then.”

I got my friend outside of the lodge before I relayed the news. Butch was very close to his mother and had witnessed her being abused by his drunken father. He wailed and hit things and ran and then fell on the ground and rolled on his back in the pine needles and he screamed at the sky and he cried loud sobs that sounded like he was dying, too. Tourists stared at a madman. After a few hours, he was able to call his brother for the money. We learned there was no car rental office near the North Rim, and we needed to charter a small plane to fly back across the canyon to get a car at the park’s airport. Butch’s brother wired the extra money after I told a ranger what had happened, and he drove us out to the dirt airstrip. Butch sat in back of the Dodge and sobbed softly.

The ranger stopped next to a single-engine Cessna. A man, presumably the pilot, was circling the fragile looking craft and examining the fuselage, wheels, and prop. Butch and I dropped our packs in the dirt. He just looked off to the tree line and a group of cabins as I walked up and introduced myself to the pilot. The sky had turned a dark gray to the west and a wind was raising dust clouds and I began to wonder if my first flight in a plane was going to be in a thunderstorm over the Grand Canyon.

“Is it okay to fly now?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine. We just need to get outta here now so we can beat that squall line coming up the canyon from the west. You got the money?”

Butch was counting out twenties as he shuffled through the runway dirt. The pilot pocketed the cash, opened a latch behind a door, and told us to stuff our packs into the cargo hold and climb into the cabin. I got in first and let Butch set up front and hoped that being around a stranger in a tight space might help keep him from crying. I did not know if the pilot understood our circumstances but as we rolled toward a cliff at the end of the strip, he pulled back on the yoke and the plane rose as he yelled.

“Yee haw, ride ‘em cowboy!”

Wind hit the side of the fuselage right then and the plane slipped sideways while continuing to climb. I saw the pilot’s face from where I sat behind Butch, and he was expressionless, but the plane started to bounce and slam, and he was working very hard at control. A few thousand feet above the rim, he leveled off and talked to us in the headsets.

“Gonna stay here below the clouds,” he said. “Too tall to get above the rain. Shouldn’t be but about another ten minutes, and we’ll be on the ground at the airport over there. Real short flight.”

Butch and I looked out the window at the curving brown switchbacks that marked the trails we had followed across the canyon. The river made a clear blue line between the walls of rock, and when I looked up, there were yellow flashes of lightning sparking against a purple castle of clouds. Butch did not seem afraid, but he had been on helicopters and troop planes in Vietnam. We hit a pocket of unstable air and the plane instantly dropped several hundred feet and sounded like it was going to break apart until the wings finally regained lift. We tilted sharply to the left and I thought we were going down in the canyon when a gust of wind hit us but the pilot lined up the paved strip on the South Rim and we floated down to the ground with the prop feathered and the wind settling. I resolved I was never again going to get on a plane. Instead, I spent much of my professional life flying as a journalist.

“This place is great,” Shaw said as we left the lodge for our motorcycles. “I’m gonna come back with the family.”

“Yeah, come here, though, to the North Rim. In the summer, the South Rim is a giant traffic jam with car campers from L.A., Phoenix, and Vegas. Not easy to get up here, so it will never be crowded.”

A few weeks after we had visited, the Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim no longer existed. The stone chimney and foundation were all that remained after a wildfire had swept up from the Dragon Bravo drainage complex that fed water into the canyon and the Colorado River. A lightning strike had lit the sage that had been dried by lingering drought, and wind sent flames racing across the Kaibab Plateau. Seventy thousand acres of forest have been destroyed. The lodge had already been consumed by fire in 1937, only nine years after construction was completed by the Union Pacific Railroad. The project was designed to attract more tourists to the North Rim. The Dragon Bravo fire’s erratic behavior, pushed by wind and fed by dense, dry vegetation, caused firefighters to concentrate on saving lives instead of structures. The remote location, wooden construction, lightning, extreme drought, and fierce wind made unlikely any hopeful outcomes for the iconic structure.

Our way south took us back out Highway 89a and we passed near the location of the White Sage Fire in Coconino County, a blaze that would blow up at almost the same time as Dragon Bravo and was still burning after taking 40 thousand acres in flame. On July 19th, the National Interagency Fire Center estimated 50 wildfires were out of control across the American West and 1.8 million acres had been burned. There are more than 15,000 personnel deployed, using air tankers and helicopters. The Dragon Bravo Fire, riding the high country wind, has only been 40 percent contained. Walking the rubble of the Grand Canyon Lodge, National Park Service officials are contemplating what they expect to be a five-year project to rebuild the landmark hotel. More fire resistant materials are likely to replace timber, though there is a sullen acknowledgment that everything burns when the fire delivers sufficient heat.

There are troubling politics in fire management, too. Arizona’s governor and other state leaders are calling for an investigation into what resources were deployed and how the flames were able to reach the historic lodge. A tactic of containment was used initially, and the National Park Service indicated it was working until the wind roared across the high desert and pushed a wall of flame beyond their fire lines. An estimated 60 structures have been destroyed, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park has been closed for the season. The Chinese climate hoax appears to have been effectively deployed. Droughts last longer, winds blow harder, rain falls longer and in greater volume, blizzards turn colder and snow gets deeper, hurricanes and tornadoes spin up stronger and more deadly as American policy makers reduce environmental regulations on fossil fuels and pollution.

Every summer now, the American West seems set to flame by an invisible arsonist. Many fires are caused naturally by lightning or wind-borne sparks from campfires or barbecue pits. The amount of dried fuel, though, made dense and dying by drought, is almost without precedent. We take the fight to the flames with planes and engines and courage but the efforts often seem to lack great effect and the damage becomes as epic as the landscape that is ravaged. Forests and undergrowth grow back green and strong after fires but much is lost to the decades of waiting on recovery. Something more than just a forest or a lodge is burned to the ground, though. The image of our country and our memories are scorched by flame, and the hopefulness and beauty of our shared national landscape is charred and darkened.

And we act as if nothing can be done to stop the loss.