An uninhabited empire
John Stewart Collis
There are two routes by which we should approach the Grand Canyon: from the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest; or from Phoenix, Flagstaff, and Sedona. If we choose the former we will be amazed enough to be prepared for anything. We see a 300 mile desert that does not seem a desert; a rainbow laid upon the lap of earth, not arched above it; a green prairie in the distance that is not made of grass, but of stones; the predominant hue a rusty pink fuelled by the iron in the sediments that stained the flowing flint 300 million years ago. Yet not a constant picture, this Painted Desert. For, standing on high ground above the badlands of the plain, the light aloft affects the earth below in ceaseless change of aspect: a forbidding moor under black rain clouds; shifting colours caught on the ribbed surface as the summer clouds pass over; while with the raising and the setting of the sun the prevailing rust is turned to red.
Adjacent to this desert is the Petrified Forest. We come upon logs, sometimes a landslide of them in a gully. We cannot pick them up, they are much too heavy. For they are not made of wood. Once there had been a great forest here, which, sinking under encroaching sediment, was swathed in clay, until, after 150 million years' erosion, that cover was taken off and the trees were seen again. But they were no longer trees or trunks. Not one atom of wood remained. Yet their facsimile, their fossiled script, their photographs, are here. No one really quite understands how this was done; by what combination of forces in the forge and turmoil of time, by what secretions and additions in the cauldron of re-creation, the likeness has been preserved and the substance changed. But the likeness is here for all to see. That which was destroyed is restored in outward semblance. That which was lost is found. We see the replicas in many sizes. There are logs, not composed of coal as we might expect, but of quartz and iron, of manganese and silica, so that a smooth sliced stump glows with yellow, orange, and white, with black, blue, and purple shades; there are small twigs perfectly recorded; there are massive trunks still rooted in the rock-matrix like unfinished sculptures, and many lie prostrate on the ground — prostration, true gauge and image of eternal rest, beyond even the calendar of Nature to disturb.
Clearly this makes a good approach to the Grand Canyon. Yet I favour a more prosaic route which has the advantage that you eventually arrive at the most impressive point of the Canyon with precipitative immediacy. That is to say you go from Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff and Sedona.
When flying across America I have often been impressed by how few people seem to live there. A faulty view, no doubt, but excusable seeing the amount of wild open spaces uninhabited. At least this seems true of Arizona. Driving along, I have never seen so much of nothing. Neither to the right nor left of the long ribbon of road is there anything to behold — save the petrol stations. These places have names, though terribly incongruous with the startlingly characterless nature of their appearance: Horse Thief Basin, Deadman's Wash, Desert Hills, Badger Springs, Bloody Basin Road, General Crook Trail, Skunk Creek, Happy Valley, Pioneers Road, Thundering Road. In that order. Evocative enough of settlers who had failed to settle. Nor had many people settled yet, it seems, except the owners of petrol stations. However, when we reach Sedona a change occurs. Great gorges appear and huge isolated rocks looking from afar like vast cathedrals built with red stone. Monumental rockfaces in the shadow of which in a Western a Lee Marvin pursued by a John Wayne is finally brought down. And if we mount to a town in the vicinity, called Jerome, high on a hill, the enormous stadium of Arizona becomes apparent because of the sight of the long high rim of a mountain range that serves as background to the mighty plain.
Presently we reach the Grand Canyon. We come upon it suddenly at one of its most impressive points. Indeed, stepping from the car for only a few yards I was able to lean against a railing and see the Canyon.
An eagle flew below me. People in the gorge would see it flying high above them in the heavens; yet I, with my feet upon the flinty earth, looked down upon the bird that winged it in the sky.
It was with some consternation that I gazed into the awful abyss: my mind was not attuned to such silence; such terror; and such beauty. It was one mile in depth; eight miles across to the other side; and 217 miles in length. I had been unaware of these dimensions.
Then for the chief surprise. There is always a chief surprise when we visit famous places. Something unexpected. I found myself looking across at — Ancient Egypt! True, I looked down upon a gorge, every inch representing a million years cleavage of the hard substance of rock by the soft substance of water, so that at the bottom two thousand million years are writ upon the deepest rocks. But that was not what surprised me. I was also gazing across a /and, an empire with gigantic pyramids, towers, temples, sculptures. This was no idle fancy of my own. When I came to the most popular view-point of the Canyon, I found there a focusing 'telescope' by means of which you could concentrate upon various aspects of the scene; and special focusing places on the dial were marked as Pyramid I; Pyramid II; Cheops; Zoroaster; Aztec Temple; Buddha; Sphinx — and so forth.
But it was not like other lands, other empires. Though gloriously englamoured by every species of shape and colour, and receiving the conflagration of the sunset, light adding to light, earthly hues multiplied by heavenly rays — it was yet unpeopled. No one lived in that country. No one worshipped at those shrines. No one entered in at those temples, nor gazed at those pyramids. When night came on, no lights began to appear across the land, for there were no houses as there were no streets, and no vehicles, and no citizens. It was fearful to watch the darkness absorb it into speechless night. All was blotted out as if it had never been. . . But, at every dawn, when the sun rises the lost land emerges again; at first entangled in vapour, then gradually declared, until at last the terraces and towers, the monuments and pyramids and temples are wholly established; and this empire, without kings or commoners, unconquered and unconquerable, resumes its supremacY.
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