Ah, my foes, and oh my friends: I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe, and I’m back. I’ve seen silent stars at 10,000 feet and a stone sky carved out of old and massive earth and I’ve been inside a cave that had a secret bar and dance floor in the back and I’ve had eggs and black coffee every morning before “we’d better get on the road if we want to make it to Bryce before the wind gets bad” and I saw a house pushed so deep into the ground only its roof and the first six inches of the top floor were still visible.
Verdict: American West? More like American Best.
I saw RV parks and cowboy-themed churches and withered mining camps and old polygamist cemeteries and Canadian retirees with “oh, two feet of snow in the backyard still, at least! We’re just happy to see the sun” and more than my fair share of Best Westerns, which are a fine hotel chain with numerous amenities and a real decent breakfast buffet if you get up before nine. A few elk too, and at least one hawk, and a pair of wild boar piglets trotting across the street from Prescott City Hall.
If you leave an ocean alone for long enough, it’ll foam and boil over and then subside into a long red cliff.
If you drive through a forest long enough, the ground will open up and you’re at the Grand Canyon. I don’t know why; it just does.
You ever see the Grand Canyon? You probably have. I hadn’t. I knew it’d be nice. Figured I knew what it looked like — canyon, grand, big hole in the ground, down Arizona way — friends, I was barreled, not to say bowled, clean over. It’s like someone scooped the heart right out of the earth and replaced it with a carving of a sunset. Quiet, too; the kind of quiet you can’t push away by talking any more than you can keep out the night by closing your eyes. An insistent, pressing, loud kind of quiet. You really ought to go. Take your grandmother, if she’s still around. You’ll have a great time. Get the steak at dinner. You’re in the Grand Canyon with a woman born in the 1930s; get a steak.
Friends, like many of you I was until very recently under the impression that Death In Yellowstone was the greatest book ever written about death in one of our nation’s national parks. Until recently. The Grand Canyon cured me of this folly when I happened upon this little number: Over The Edge: Death In Grand Canyon.
How many people have fallen over the edge of the rim? Fifty-five. Oh, my God. Fifty-five tumbled over the edge. Never go near the edge of anything. Don’t even look at that big red lever on the backs of planes when you’re in line for the bathroom, the one that says DO NOT TOUCH, TOUCHING WILL CAUSE THIS DOOR TO RIP OPEN AND SUCK OUT EVERYONE NOT TIED DOWN IN THE REAR OF THE PLANE.
How many people have fallen over the edge of the rim after telling their son “Sometimes you gotta take chances in life”? One living soul entire.
Purchase yourself a copy. Read it every night in bed before you fall asleep. You’ll have horrible nightmares about being killed, but it’ll be worth it.
(Have you ever died in a dream and then had the dream keep going? I have, now. It’s terrible. You float around, a sort of pained and dimly-aware consciousness that gets foggier and less sure of itself with every minute, but you can’t get back into a dream and you can’t quite bring yourself to realize you’re dreaming and wake up. That’s what I’m most afraid happens after you die, not hell and not Nothing but getting less and less real without stopping.)
Anyhow. Go to the Southwest. I missed you all.
Tags: caves, grand canyon, grandmothers, mild gender essentialism, national parks, there is very little actual content to this post it’s literally just ‘stuff mallory did on her vacation’ so consider yourself fairly warned, things i did on my vacation, vacations
Related Posts
MALLORY OH WE MISSED YOU SO
While you were off having great American adventures we were busy MISSING YOU
Welcome baaaaack!
SO GOOD: “It’s like someone scooped the heart right out of the earth and replaced it with a carving of a sunset.”
I’m so glad someone else buys the death in national park books during their vacations there. I hung out in Big Bend and Zion Canyon earlier this month, and while I am not at all surprised by the way most people die in Zion (stop getting close to the edges of thing, people!), apparently murder is a popular way to die in Big Bend.
Also, the nephew of one of the most recent dudes to fall off the Angel’s Landing trail happened to sit next to me on that very same trail, and as I watched him finish his ascent, it became quite clear that recklessness is a family trait.
This is possibly the best one ever – The curse of the giant tortoise, about the Galapagos Islands.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-curse-Giant-Tortoise-…
Murder is the most popular way to die in Big Bend??
I will definitely tell that to my husband, who went there every year from ages 4 to 21.
Big Bend is the best.
welcome back! I feel like that false king that ruled over england while the real king was off at war during robin hood times
you know the one
I HAVE A MOLE?!?!
This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSgUffCZZD0
A POX ON THAT PHONY KING OF ENGLAND
“It’s like someone scooped the heart right out of the earth and replaced it with a carving of a sunset”
You know how sometimes you take a first bite of a meal and it’s more delicious than you imagined and it just fills your body with this animal bliss? Reading that sentence was like that.
You know how sometimes you read something and think “If that is the last thing I ever read, it would be just perfect”?
And you know how once in a vast while, you read something and are filled with sheer envy that you didn’t write it yourself, but the envy doesn’t bite or cut because you’re just so happy someone did?
Yeeeeessssss. Mallory’s writing does that to me often.
The last thing that did it to me was Helen McClory’s Pretty Dead Girl Takes a Break, also at The Toast.
It gutted me, filled me with delicious envy, and made me so happy that someone had written it that I could barely be sad it wasn’t me. I keep going back and re-reading it, I keep sharing it, I keep turning it over and over in my mind like a piece of delicate porcelain in my hands.
But…I can’t read scary Death and National Parks Books because I’m too busy reading the Cannibals Ate The Rockefeller Scion Book and I fear that if I read them back to back I will only have death dreams forever.
oh my goodness whaaaat yes please
Yup. Savage Harvest. I was so angry at myself for not knowing that this was A Thing, and then last night my dad tells me that he was invited to go to Papua New Guinea with his college professor to try to locate said Eaten Scion. It’s all too much.
See, this is why “Clark Rockefeller” could get over on so many people — Actual Rockefellers be crazy.
my understanding (gleaned from an NPR story half-heard while wandering in and out of a room) is that the Asmat discovered his plot of cultural thievery and appropriation and took appropriate action. accurate?
Somewhat. So far, it seems like he walked into a deathly combination of cultural appropriation, decades-long murder sprees by white colonialists and an overall culture of reciprocal headhunting. It was a perfect storm and he was a 23 year old white kid that didn’t really have a complete understanding of the situation. It’s a crazy read.
OH MY GOD Carl Hoffman is coming to my place of work on Monday to do a talk and book signing about this book and I just can’t stop thinking about cannibals I CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR HIM TALK ABOUT CANNIBALS
Welcome back and yes let’s all move to the Southwest and gaze on beautiful desert skies and red rocks. Except not because there’s not enough water for the people who live there already.
P.S. people who are already there, please stop trying to have lush green lawns like people do back East, just come to peace with your scrubs and sedums.
I live there and happily report that I have a yard filled with nothing but dirt. And two tumbleweeds that my sister and I found the other week and had grand racing plans for.
As a side note, I didn’t expect to like living here after living next to an ocean for two years. However, the southwest has weasled its way into my soul and taken residence. The air, the sun, the mountains!!!!
People Who Think They Are Invincible: Teenagers, Dads.
Welcome back! The Grand Canyon is one of those places you expect to be underwhelmed by, because you’ve seen SO many pictures, but no. It cannot be captured in pictures.
I can’t read those “Death in…” books because I become convinced that anything bad and rare that happens to other people will happen to me. (Side note: I am really not excited that I have to fly in a couple weeks, given the Malaysian crash.) And then there was this one time I read a book about Montana bear attacks before camping in Glacier National Park. Bad idea! Baaaaad idea.
My wife and I did a 10 day camping tour in Alaska a few years back and before we went, I read extensively about every bear attack in the history of bears. I slept maybe 3 hours of that 10 days and that was only when my body became so exhausted from waking terror that it just shut me down.
Oh yes, I identify. It does get pretty tiring to lay awake thinking, “Did I leave a stick of gum in the tent? Is my toothpaste in the bear bag? If a bear can smell my toothpaste in a tube, won’t it be able to smell it on my breath? OMG a twigged just snapped.”
I swear twigs are malignant creatures that gather about tents in the dead of night and snap just when they sense a fear-deranged camper is finally about to go to sleep.
Some of the most ridiculous bear-attack advice I’ve read was in this book my thesis supervisor insisted I read before doing fieldwork. It said “if the bear goes from mauling you to eating you, stop playing dead and fight back”. Really? I’m supposed to be checking whether it’s swallowing the pieces it’s tearing off or if it’s spitting them out?
If you feel yourself being lightly coated with lemon zest or a tangy BBQ sauce, it’s time to get up and fight.
One time I died in a dream and then had to go into the witness protection program so I could testify against the poachers that killed me! I am still not sure if I were undead or a ghost or if the afterlife was the witness protection program (I think it was the latter).
Also do you ever have to suppress the urge to do something terrible? All I can think when I am near the edge of things is “DON’T JUMP DON’T JUMP” and I would like to know why I have to beg myself not to do these things.
Imp of the perverse!!! That voice in your head is the imp of the perverse. Edgar Allen Poe named it, no big shocker there.
My day is INFINITELY improved knowing that is what it is called
THANK YOU, now I can yell at it.
Sometimes when I hear that voice telling me “DON’T RUN IN FRONT OF THAT CAR”, another voice chimes in “No. DO IT. If you do that you will probably have an excuse not to finish that essay by next week.”
I’ve got two weeks left in this semester. Let’s see if I can hold out against both voices until then!
Are you OK? Your Toast Family cares about you!
Oh yes, my imp of the perverse occasionally says, “Want to see how you look with no hair? Chemo will do the trick,” and “if you got SARS, you would get some time off work!” And I like my job and it’s not that hard. So, yes. SHUT UP, BRAIN.
“If you get in an accident and your car gets totaled, you would get some time off work and probably a new car! And you could rest for a while!” SHUT UP BRAIN THAT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE.
“If you got that vomiting and diarrhea combo virus that’s going around, you could lose a couple pounds,” THAT’S PROBABLY A BAD IDEA BRAIN, GOD.
Hey, that was my brain when I had the flu over Christmas! That fucker.
We may not be okay, but at least we’re not alone!
“If you veer into that other lane and get killed in a car accident you won’t have to pay back your credit card debt or finish school or not live up to anyone’s expectations!” Goddammit, imp of the perverse. I’m going to remember that name.
Take care of yourself, Toast friend. All of our Imps of the Perverse can go have a picnic together.
The Most Dangerous Picnic
Every night I have to work and I feel kind of shitty but nobody can cover, I always think that maybe I will just pass out and get to go home early.
ME TOO
So I spent part of last week away from the internets and in Los Angeles visiting friends and sightseeing. I had to tell myself “don’t jump, don’t lean over too far” sooo many times just hiking in Griffith Park. I can’t imagine how much stronger that voice would be by the Grand Canyon.
I had that problem pretty bad as a kid, I’d dare myself to hurt myself to the point that I held the tip of a knife up to my heart like a psycho. I swear, becoming a pot-head teenager was the best way to normalize me.
If you’re interested in fiction about people dying (ok, being killed) in the rural West, may I recommend the work of Mr. C.J. Box? http://www.amazon.com/C.-J.-Box/e/B001IGSO0I/ref=… First of all, his name is C.J. Box.
Oh god yes, I may have only been, like, 10 at the time, but going to the Grand Canyon with my mom and her parents was the best. And my dad could’ve come, he is so not the dad you need to worry about around ledges, but that’s also why he couldn’t come: he’s too chicken to get on planes.
But yes, I like to believe that being a little kid looking at the gorgeous, alien wilderness of the Sonora Desert and everyone’s favorite hole in the ground was a very formative experience.
I really like the idea of rebranding the Grand Canyon as AMERICA’S BEST HOLE. Imagine the merchandising potential!
I had a little panic attack when thinking about tumbling over the edge, so thanks, Mallory!
Check your grandmother privilege, Mallory. That said, thank you for validating my fear of edges. I’m fine with heights as long as I’m on the correct side of some real thick Plexiglass or a nice tall wire fence.
I SAID ‘IF YOU STILL HAVE ONE’
Pitch your grandparent privilege with pride. (Similar to ‘let your freak flag fly’.)
Yes! I have taken to saying I have a fear of falling, not a fear of heights. Top of the Empire State Building? No problem. Rickety step-ladder? Yikes.
I was the youngest of five, not quite a year old, when my family started the summer-long camping trip from Maine to California and back, stopping at all the great tourist sites and natural wonders along the way. There are innumerable pictures of the whole family gazing out at some natural wonder, and me propped on my mother’s slim hip as she holds me in toward her body, my face turned toward (and, depending on her level of anxiety about falling in, sometimes clutched in to) her shapely bosom.
And to this day when I say things like “I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon,” my mother will sharply correct me. “Of course you have!”
Well, FINE, but I visited King Arthurs birthplace and… and…
alright your trip was way cooler
Well dang, now I’m sitting at my boring job and thinking about the glory days of my family travelin’ ’round the West a couple of years ago. Nostalgia is huge bitch who hasn’t had her coffee yet.
So many amazing things packed into such a small post. That’s some god damned writing efficiency.
So the first time I went to the Grand Canyon was during spring break when I was… 21 or 22 maybe? Anyway, my husband and I figured April would be a FINE time to camp, drove from San Diego, camping in the Anzo-Borrega desert on the way. We got there kind of late and hurried to set up camp when it started to storm. Shit. Secure the rain fly, throw an extra tarp over it and lets go see what we can of this damn hole before it’s too dark to see anything. Friends, my first view of the Grand Canyon was through the most spectacular lighting storm I have ever seen. Lightning was striking DOWN INTO the canyon. It was gorgeous and terrifying.
We drank some whiskey and hunkered down in the tent and shivered through the rain, which turned to frozen rain, and finally around 6am figured something would be open and we could get coffee and be not in a frozen ice cave of a tent. I had to thaw the ice off the zipper to get out. We found coffee and walked around the rim and watched the sunrise and holy fuck, the sun rising showed us how little of the canyon we had seen the night before. And I totally bought that book, and we found a shop on the rim with a fireplace and stayed in there for an hour thawing out.
Hightailed to back to Vegas that afternoon because no amount of pretty is worth being that cold to me.
More about the underground house, thanks.
I wholeheartedly approve of any and all Blade Runner references, especially on The Toast.
and now I want to go to the Southwest.
The thing that sticks with me most about the Grand Canyon (aside from my dad doing that thing where he stands with his back to the canyon and a surprised look on his face so we can take a picture that makes it look like he is falling) was how freaking GOOD that place smelled. All of the plant life on the rim smells of sage and vanilla and honey and desert wind.
Which gave me something to enjoy as I clung to said trees far enough back from the rim that if I fell down and rolled for several feet I still would not fall off of the edge.
I have hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and it is every bit as magnificent as Mallory says it is.
My distant, foggy-fearful childhood memory of the Grand Canyon–it started to rain halfway through us standing and looking down into it. My mother got a big green plasticky poncho out of our rental car and swathed me in it, I could not have been more than eight or nine, and so was very small. The hood covered my eyes and I was stricken with the absolute certainty that because I could not see I would trip over my own poncho and tumble to my death in the Canyon.
Ahhh, memories.
ps. So glad you’re back!! Can your grandmother guest-edit the Toast for a week, too?!
Aaaaaand we’re back with a classically Mallory post – starts off innocent and beautiful and ends in horror. I used to have dreams of falling off the Grand Canyon. I’ve never been and don’t plan to anytime soon, but it still haunts me, as if walking down the street in New England the sidewalk will just end and will be the gaping cunnus of the Canyon and I’ll be devoured. Anyway.
I also once had a dream that a friend who recently died in a car accident came back and was hanging out with our group of friends, but he was dead, and we all knew it and he didn’t. We were sad and he kept asking us why, and it was an unspoken rule that we were not to tell him, and not to let him go home to his parents’ house.
I own Death in the Grand Canyon, and it’s great! Mallory, how are you writing this? Statistically, you shouldn’t have made it out of there.
The book is really good — it’s divided up into chapters about the style of tragic death (falling off edge, dying in desert, drowning…even murder and suicide). I think my favorite part is how you can tell the authors kind of start to run out of metaphors as they describe the same (awful) thing over and over.
I remember in the drowning chapter, they’re talking about somebody falling into the Colorado, and it’s the fifth or sixth anecdote, and the metaphor they use is that the guy gets crushed between the boat and cliff “like in the trash compactor scene in Star Wars.”
I got Over the Edge last Fall! And it was slightly terrifying, but not enough to put me off of the idea of going on a rafting trip down the Colorado.
Only TWO FEET of snow in the backyard.
Dear God! It sounds a very heaven.
Man, you were all up in my home state, Mallory!
I lived in AZ my whole life, but did not see the Grand Canyon until I was 29. Before we were married, my husband and I vacationed in Flagstaff for a few days. It was so boring that we fought constantly, just to have something to do. On the third day, we drove to the Canyon. It was drizzling rain and we sat at the edge, sharing sips from a 40 in a brown paper bag, and just being quiet. Very Teenage Dirtbag-y.
I have not been to the Grand Canyon since I was two, and my only memory of it is me lying down on my stomach to slide under a railing to get a better view (which I thought was clever because you can’t fall over if you’re lying down), and my mom screaming and pulling me back by my ankles.
When I visited the Grand Canyon, my cousins were CONSTANTLY playing “don’t fall, saved your life” – where you shove someone off balance and then catch them immediately? It was the worst place to play that game, and in retrospect I feel much less awkward about my inability to shove and catch people near the edge of cliffs.
I am terrified of heights. Utterly terrified. I can’t climb higher than the third step on a ladder. Working in a tall building is a receipt for daily panic attacks. Taking the elevated train makes my skin crawl and I feel like I’m going to vomit. Every time we turn a big curve I close my eyes and brace myself.
But the Grand Canyon?
I walked right up to the edge and looked down and it was fucking glorious.
All this discussion of people dying among the immensities of nature is reminding me that I never finished Young Men And Fire, the true story of how a bunch of young men died in an actual hell of a forest fire and as a result caused the United States to figure out properly how to fight fire, and that I really should. The first half was delightful (and it seems like many of you would treasure it, unless it all goes horribly wrong in the second half).