Grand Canyon of the Colorado: Recurrent Studies in Impressions and Appearances

251 Pages·1992·0.88 MB·English

by  John C. Van Dyke

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado :
title: Recurrent Studies in Impressions and
Appearances
author: Van Dyke, John Charles.
publisher: University of Utah Press
isbn10 | asin: 0874803888
print isbn13: 9780874803884
ebook isbn13: 9780585112220
language: English
subject Grand Canyon (Ariz.)
publication date: 1992
lcc: E788.V24 1992eb
ddc: 917.9.1/32
subject: Grand Canyon (Ariz.)
Page i
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado
Page ii
From a photograph by F. A. Lathe, copyrighted by the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad.
Pima Point, looking west.
Page iii
THE GRAND CANYON OF THE
COLORADO
Recurrent Studies in Impressions and Appearances
by
John C. Van Dyke
Foreword by
Peter Wild
University of Utah Press Salt Lake City
Page iv
Copyright © 1920 Charles Scribner's Sons Foreword copyright ©
1992 University of Utah Press
¥ The paper in this book meets the standards for permanence and
durability established by the Committee on Production Guidelines for
Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Van Dyke, John Charles, 1856-1932.
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado : recurrent
studies in impressions and appearances / by John C.
Van Dyke, with illustrations from photographs;
foreword by Peter Wild.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: C. Scribner's
Sons, 1920. With new foreword.
ISBN 0-87480-388-8 (alk. paper)
1. Grand Canyon (Ariz.) I. Title.
E788.V24 1992
917.9.1 '32-dc20 92-53610
CIP
Page v
Contents
Page
Foreword by Peter Wild vii
Preface-Dedication xxix
Chapter
I. The Rim 1
II. Magnitude and Scale 11
III. Canyon Carving 24
IV. Arena-Making 37
V. The Great Denudation 47
VI. The Canyon Walls 57
VII. Buttes and Promontories 75
VIII. Bright Angel and Hermit Trails 90
IX. Other River-Trails 106
X. The Colorado 122
XI. Night in the Canyon 134
XII. Rim Views 144
XIII. Grand and Desert View 156
XIV. From Dawn to Dusk 171
XV. The Tusayan Forest 181
XVI. The Cliff-Dweller 196
XVII. The Discovery 205
Page vii
Foreword
On March 9, 1989, a German tourist named Gisela Elixmann died at
the Grand Canyon. Standing on the edge of the South Rim, the young
woman gazed into the great hole in the earth, grew dizzy, and simply
tumbled in. Four days later, Yuri Nagata, a visitor from Japan,
suffered a similar fate.
That's not to say that such deaths are common at the Grand Canyon.
People beholding the Southwest's most popular natural spectacle do
not regularly topple witlessly into the Great Abyss. In fact, a ranger
at the Grand Canyon National Park assures me that only about one
person a year dies in such a manner, statistically a small figure
when measured against the four million visitors who annually flock
to the park. Nevertheless, the danger is real. For the ranger also
notes that tourists often feel queasy during their first glance into the
chasm. Full of anticipation, they rush from their cars to see the
sight they've hear about all their lives. Yet when they reach the
guardrail, panic grips them. They twitch and grimace at what's
before them, fight to get their breaths, and have to sit down. The
Grand Canyon is so vast, so various, and so beyond ordinary
experience that
Page viii
people reel before it, disoriented by the incomprehensible.
Tourists are not the only ones who suffer confusion before the natural
wonder. Writers, too, have stood on the brink, faced the emptiness,
trembled, and then plunged in. With such words as "And there,
defeating my senses, was the depth," and "all alike have failed,"
author after wheyfaced author has announced the impossibility of
describing the Grand Canyon. And then, of course, tried to describe it.
This behavior is not the old writer's trick of exaggerating the
difficulties ahead to appear all the more accomplished when tackling
them. Perhaps Frank Waters is right when he says in The Colorado
that the Grand Canyon is ''beyond comprehension" A landscape of so
many huge and diverse parts defies capture between two covers. We
have fine studies of specific aspects of the Canyon, of its wildlife,
flowers, trails, geology, and such. Yet few writers convey a
harmonious impression of the whole
It could be that the fault lies within us. Because we perceive the world
in patterns, we want a unified view that may not exist in reality. Some
Navajo Indians approach the difficulty by cloaking the Canyon in
myth. They believe that long ago a great inland sea covered the area.
The water finally broke out, leaving the passageway the Colorado
River now
Page ix
follows. Hence, the ancient Navajosall fish back in those daysswam
out. As charming as the tale is, however, most of us don't believe that
our ancestors were fish. Thus, since the closing decades of the last
century, when the nation began turning earnest attention to the Grand
Canyon, it has presented a nagging literary conundrum.
Granting all this, John C. Van Dyke's The Grand Canyon of the
Colorado offers one of the most deft performances by a man already
known for his passions and complexities, for the book succeeds in its
subtlety where others miss the mark. By way of a simple device the
book reverses the situation, turning the innate disorder of its subject
into literary advantages. It can't be said with certainty that Van Dyke
did this consciously, but it can be said that the book bears the stamp
found in much of his life and writing, here written larger than before,
matching his subject. Essentially, Van Dyke brought a finely
developed way of seeing the natural world to this natural wonder, and
this outlook lies at the core of his Grand Canyon book. The volume
may not be the final literary solution concerning the Grand Canyon
problem, but it is a solution and a satisfying one within the wide
boundaries Van Dyke established for the work. As we shall see, all of
this has to do not merely with an author taking up his pen to spar with
yet
Page x
one more subject but with a man applying values nurtured over his
entire professional career. To catch Van Dyke's method in The Grand
Canyon, then, it helps to know something about who he was, how he
thought, and the stage of his life at which he approached this
formidable literary challenge.
It may come as a surprise to some readers who admire Van Dyke for
his more famous book, The Desert, that this explorer of the West's
wild places, this independent man quick with a gun when need be, for
the most part was not a lone-wolf frontiersman and not really an
explorer. To the contrary, John was born in 1856 in a country mansion
near New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was from an old Dutch family
of culture and means, people proud of their Revolutionary War heroes
and ancestors dating back to the early settlement of New Amsterdam.
Following a tradition of public service and influence, his attorney
father served as a bank president, congressman, and justice of his
state's supreme court. An unusual turn came in the boy's life when for
reasons still obscure his father moved the Van Dykes to the wilds of
Minnesota. There young John grew up as a child of the frontier,
hunting with the local Indians, trekking through the vast forests, and
later sowing his oats among the hardly cultured cowboys of the
Montana Territory. The adventures marked the