During a loop between Las Vegas and Moab around the big colorful river, in August 2018, here is lastly the undisputed master, the Grand Canyon.
Immutable in its fantastic and silent majesty :
the strongest emotional shock
Our accomodtion is in Tusayan, a Holiday Inn that smells a bit of used frying oil, a crowded hotel. The whole hastening world seems to be there.
Pressed by our circuit, but also eager to discover the sumptuous monster, by the road 64 to the north, here we are 2000 meters on the plateau of the south bank of the great river (the south rim), in the forest of Coconino.
Here are the same long-eared antelopes as at Bryce Canyon.
Then, a belvedere.
And there, the shock,... which is renewed without blunting at the next belvedere, and the next one ...
The silence is absolute, sidereal.
A primal emotion, rather than the "breathtaking", too small expression that is missing... of breath.
On the contrary, we savor with great breathes these inconceivable and mythical panoramas.
And yet - hell bells! - nothing divine, nor accessible by our most concrete senses (at least sight and hearing).
Since this is only the result of half a dozen million years of erosion (according to UNESCO) of the Colorado River through the thickness of the eponymous plateau, which itself is doing the big back, slowly rising for about thirty million years.
A very profane sacred which seizes man is the spontaneous and total admiration that he feels in nature for the disproportionate, the sumptuous, for the immobile power, for what exceeds in beauty the imaginable.
We understand the veneration that he has been able to arouse from simple and deep souls such as those of the Amerindians of the origins, since the 350 centuries they are present on this continent coming from Asia.
Navajo spirituality and culture fit into this grandiose, hostile and inevitable environment that must be accommodated and taken advantage of, without vainly trying to fight it.
And it's hardly surprising to see the amazement that such a show creates in the minds of urban people a little condescending, as much amateur as they are of vertical concrete of mega(lo)poles.
The visitor is no longer just a spectator, as at Bryce Canyon or Upper Antelope Canyon.
He is a part, a fragment of this piece of universe that he contemplates, that grows him and that he believes he understands and possesses.
He belongs to this great harmony.
There, front of him, in an instant time and space contract.
This very long, very deep and admirable terrestrial balafre of almost 450 km long, visible from the Moon, results from about 6 million years of erosion.
Out of all measure with a man's life.
From a pharaonic human work, that of the Egyptian pyramids, Napoleon, who was still only Bonaparte would have said to his army: "... from the top of these pyramids, 40 centuries contemplate you!".
About the Grand Canyon, a work of natural erosion to which man is necessarily foreign at least until then, it is about 60,000 centuries that Navajos contemplate, impassive, and mocking these visitors who are surprised by everything and nothing.
Do we know how mockery for the Navajo is expressed? The obvious for the observer : a very slight squinting of the left eyelid and some eyelashes that curl, behind the sunglasses.
Here it is our guide Daniel, very expressive, and very pro in Monument Valley. Thank you Daniel!
In any case, 60,000 centuries is very long compared to the Egyptian flick.
On one side, the sovereign nature imposes itself over long eras. Chance, necessity, physico-chemical and tectonic laws apply irresistibly and without interruption.
On the other side, the inflexible will of pharaohs and ancient architects worshipping Ra made it possible to erect the largest of the pyramids in a few decades, a very short moment in the geological scale.
A gigantic natural work in constant and slow evolution, and a human construction barely 150 meters high, which seems frozen and indestructible, tiny on a planetary scale.
And yet both admirable for man.
The Grand Canyon, almost 30 km from one edge to the other in its most flared part, sometimes narrows to 5 km wide.
It stretches for 446 km between Lee's Ferry (south of Page) and Grand Wash Cliffs, between Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Its depth reaches 1600 meters on a portion of 16 km; the "tiny" Colorado at the very bottom is... 90 meters wide.
Above hovers a bird of prey, which spins, and with its sharp eye scrutinizes the corners, watches for a mule, a tired squirrel, a lazy rattlesnake, then sinks into the depths, rises again, disappears behind a mesa.
The harmony of the colors of the fabulous abyss, less raw than in sandstone alone, is soft, of an extraordinary variety.
Without ever yielding to uniformity.
Shadows and plateaus, arased rocks, contrasts that reinforce volumes and distances in foreground end up fading away.
Impossible in any case to try to catch the infinite and striking splendor by the photo, or even by the most professional shots ...
In any case, this is what we are absolutely convinced first.
But it is so easy to frame, to press the button like a madman, to strafe. Which, in great schmuck, I can't help but do, and assume.
Of course in vain, because the image, trivial, never gives back the magical impression of contemplation in situ.
Continuing further east along the abyss still on the south bank, here is another point of view, the ultimate, the "Desert View Watchtower".
From there, the upstream Colorado deflects clearly to the north. The magic of sumptuous and great gradually gives way to picturesque views still highly attractive.
This round tower marks a limit. It's would be made of stones in the true Indian style, that of the ancient Pueblos Peoples, but of much more monumental size.
A modern American architect, Mary Colter, built it in 1932.
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