Grand Canyon
This great American road-trip destination is still somehow underestimated in its ability to awe, particularly due to its scale; at its maximum points, the canyon is 18 miles wide and well over a mile deep. It can easily be glimpsed from space. What strikes Pete McBride, a photojournalist and National Geographic Explorer who hiked its entire length of 750 miles, in a journey captured in the 2019 documentary Into the Canyon, is the lesson this place imprints on visitors about the passage of time and the power of water. “The youngest layers of rock are on the top, and it descends through multiple layers to the basement, where the river is. In places there is rock, called the Vishnu schist, which dates back 1.8 billion years,” he says. “It is a time machine.”
The Grand Canyon contains eons of geologic history, with rock layers dating far past the dinosaurs and promising a future beyond humans. Of course, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been touched by humanity. Its carving force, the Colorado River, is in a third decade of drought, and with even the nearby Lake Powell reservoir dangerously dwindling, parts of the canyon could actually soon run dry. Apart from affecting tourism, such as recreational rafting and boating in the area, this drought could alter the ecology systems and wildlife that call the canyon home.
(A river crisis is unfolding in the American West)
McBride is still finding special spots within the canyon’s mighty maw. “There are secret alcoves and hidden slot canyons and quiet beaches under mesquite trees,” he says. But his favorite experience involves that threatened fauna. “One of the greatest attributes is the deep layer of silence that hangs throughout the landscape,” he says. “When I was walking the length, so often my alarm clock wasn’t digital, wasn’t mechanical, wasn’t even pre-dawn light. It was the soft whisper of bat wings that would circle over me as the temperature changed.”
