I've been working on little stories from my life.
The Grand Staircase
I wanted to bury my head in the sand and somehow avoid the big birthday that I faced. I was depressed and looking for some sort of uplifting revelation. Travel always put me in a different mindset so I planned a trip to Arizona with my husband, Larry. He’d never seen the Grand Canyon so that was our first stop. We stayed close to the rim and I took photographs of the colorful pink and blue sunrises and sunsets.
At the next stop, the Grand Staircase Escalante, layers of rock and sandstone line canyons in colorful displays of grey cliffs, white cliffs, vermillion cliffs, chocolate cliffs. Each layer marks a different time and era in a history dating back more than 250 million years. Like steps of a staircase, geologic layers of time descend canyon walls.
The global milestones of life are reflected in canyon layers: from the ancestors of the dinosaurs in the Kaibab era through the earliest known flowering plants in the Dakota era and up the steps to the tiniest layer at the top showing the origin of many modern mammal groups – including humans.
I thought about these canyon layers and related the colorful layers of sandstone to layers of my life. Periods of my life could be seen as layers of time – especially as I faced a new decade of my life. Growing up in Aiken was the first layer. Going to college another layer. A layer as a young wife and then a mother. Different jobs lace through several layers. Most recently, taking care of my mother and father-in-law as they declined was a distinct period. Just as the dinosaurs and plants populated the different eras in Arizona sandstone, the layers of my life are colored with the people involved in them. The transitions between layers can be subtle and gradual or they can be abrupt. My mother and my father-in-law passed away in the period of a single week.
The trip to Arizona lasted a week - just a blip in the eras of the canyons. We walked through Antelope Canyon with an Apache guide. He pointed out how the petrified sand shows the way the wind blew at that time. Subtle changes carve the canyons’ sensual, gently curving walls. Ripple marks frozen in time seem like smile lines or wrinkles - physical, visible records of life’s vicissitudes. Light filters into this canyon from above. It paints the walls each day with shifting colors of sunlight as the day progresses, alternately shadowing and spotlighting the canyon walls.
The last stop on our trip was Sedona, Arizona. We woke up at five am for a sunrise hot air balloon trip on my birthday. We climbed into the gondola and then the balloon was untethered. The pilot fired the gas jets and we rose quickly and smoothly. I looked down at earth and at life from a new perspective. The amount of hot air in the balloon directs how high or low the balloon flies, but not its direction. The wind plotted our early morning course through a beautiful red rock canyon. The air smelled like fresh pines. I enjoyed the view and the colors as I floated into a new decade. The wind on my face reminded me to feel grateful for friends and family and life.
