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    Grand Canyon National Park: Window Of Time
    Grand Canyon National Park: Window Of Time
    Grand Canyon National Park: Window Of Time
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Grand Canyon National Park: Window Of Time

    By Stewart Aitchison

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    About this ebook

    Teddy Roosevelt called it "the one place every American should see." Award-winning author Stewart Aitchison's brilliant writing reveals The Canyon in all its splendor: from the rims to river level. Explore the park through Stewart's writing or plan your own visit with the invaluable information available in this extraordinary publication.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPark Partners, Inc
    Release dateJul 21, 2010
    ISBN9781580710978
    Grand Canyon National Park: Window Of Time
    Author

    Stewart Aitchison

    Stewart Aitchison has been exploring, studying, and writing about the Grand Canyon region for almost 40 years. When not writing, he escorts natural history trips on the Colorado Plateau, Southeast Alaska, and Mexico's Baja Peninsula. He makes his home in Flagstaff, Arizona, with his wife Ann and daughter Kate.

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      Book preview

      Grand Canyon National Park - Stewart Aitchison

      GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK

      Windows of Time

      by

      Stewart Aitchison

      *****

      SIERRA PRESS

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2010 Sierra Press

      *****

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      *****

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Thanks to Jeff Nicholas, Laura Bucknall, and the Sierra Press staff for suggesting and organizing this project. I greatly appreciate Rose Houk’s fine editing, Ellis Richard’s checking of facts, all the friends who kindly reviewed the manuscript, and Late For The Train for providing caffeine support. Any remaining errors are strictly my own.

      —Stewart Aitchison

      *****

      CONTENTS

      THE GRAND CANYON

      Visiting the Park

      Architecture

      Grand Canyon Railroad

      THE SOUTH RIM

      Grand Canyon Village

      West Rim Drive

      East Rim Drive

      Geology: A Sedimentary Journey

      THE NORTH RIM

      Visiting the North Rim

      Life Zones

      The Tale of Two Squirrels

      BELOW THE RIM

      Weather

      Place Names

      Hiking the Inverted Mountains

      THE RIVER

      The Colorado River

      John Wesley Powell

      HUMAN HISTORY: From Sandals to Vibram

      FIELD GUIDES

      Wildflowers

      Mammals

      Reptiles and Amphibians

      Birds

      RESOURCES & INFORMATION

      SUGGESTED READING

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      COMING SOON

      *****

      Sunset, South Rim.

      THE GRAND CANYON

      The steam whistle pierced the azure sky. I swayed gently in my seat as the train headed north. We were traveling at a civilized speed—fast enough to know that it would only take another hour to reach the Grand Canyon but slow enough to enjoy the scenery. Not far from the Williams station, the tracks left extinct volcanoes and cinder cones behind and descended slightly onto a saltbush and rabbitbrush plain. I glimpsed a small herd of pronghorn and then a couple of cowboys chasing skinny cattle. Soon we were passing into a pygmy woodland of junipers and pinyon pines carpeted with sagebrush. An old Santa Fe Railroad promotional brochure labeled this the Black Forest. But still no sign of the Grand Canyon.

      As the grade steepened, the train slowed almost to a walk. Tall ponderosa pines replaced the diminutive woodland. A mule deer doe and fawn bounded into the forest. We passed a cabin where two small children and a fuzzy dog gave us notice. The tracks curved to the right and nearly doubled back on themselves. The train came to a halt, and then backed up onto another section of track. We had done a Y-turn to back into the Grand Canyon Railroad Station, one of only three log train stations remaining in the United States. But where was the much heralded Grand Canyon?

      I disembarked, walked past the station, and followed the walk up the hill. There stood the glorious El Tovar Hotel, built to rival the great resort hotels of Europe. Across from the hotel, to my right, was the unpretentious Hopi House, a replica of the centuries-old village of Oraibi. It could easily be the turn of the last century rather than the eve of the next, but people’s clothing and the vehicles were of the wrong vintage. My footsteps carried me beyond the historic buildings, and suddenly I found myself standing on the edge of the grandest of all canyons.

      I was on the rim of the world. Nothing but space and raw rock before me. Golden-tan cliffs dropped to a crimson slope that led to vermilion ledges and more bluffs. Below was another vertical wall of a rosy hue, in places carved into deep alcoves. This precipice was followed by another incline, long, greenish-gray, and gently leveling off into a broad bench. The bench led to the brink of a dark, foreboding inner gorge, a prison hiding the Colorado River.

      At first it seemed like a lifeless void, home only to the wind and the glare of the noontime sun. But then I noticed the stunted trees along the rim and the dark dots of shrubs growing within the Canyon. White-throated swifts darted by, tumbling and laughing. Out on a thermal, several turkey vultures teetered on dihedral-held wings. Life here is tenuous but tenacious.

      Even after more than four decades, I still get that little-kid, butterflies-in-the-stomach thrill when I go to the Grand Canyon. I gaze into it briefly, look away, blink once or twice, and peer at the gorge again—never quite sure if it is real. From my first visit as a child, I knew that I had to explore this magnificent place, try to understand it in some way. I was fortunate to live in nearby Flagstaff. Weekends and holidays could

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