In an interview long ago, I responded to a question about mortality that I wasn’t afraid of dying, that “If I didn’t have a kid, I’d tell you all to go to tell and I’d go climb in the Grand Canyon and die when I die.” It inspired a Grand Canyon Box of the items I intended to look at before heading in, with one of the last acts before heading out there being reading the entirety of this blog through for the first time.
I’d never been to the Grand Canyon, just heard about it in works of history and fiction, with the idea that it was one of the few things in life that when you get there, it does not disappoint. But instead of wanting to go see it as one of nature’s natural wonders, despite being a kid who had a small geological collection in middle school, I had dismissed going to take in millions of years worth of history from the school of rock. I have an actual ‘monster’ inside of my head, a cancer that may or may not eventually grow but has already had it’s own carving. The Grand Canyon was a place that I had made into a ghost and let grow. It was not natural growth but just an idea, a fear I’d let cast a shadow, never growing too much, but always lingering. I’d read an article about someone who went there before they passed from cancer with their family, of someone who went missing there and seemed to not want to be found. It was unfortunate those stories would ring louder in my head than the people who went there on vacation or on a hike and post the beauty of the place.
Statistically speaking, I was not supposed to make 40. I’m now less than 3 months away from making 41 so I’m appreciating the old statement about that there’s lies, damn lies, and statistics. So when in early March, my friend Chris told me they were going to go run rim to rim to rim of the Grand Canyon, I signed up. My friend Mallory was going on the trip was going out there to do it twice and set an FKT (fastest known time). I invited my partner in crime Jackie who said it was right up her alley. And with about 6 weeks to prepare, I started to train.
My friend who had done it a few times told me what he thought would be a good time to get it done in. That immediately got me to decide to not start my watch, to not care about the distance or time it took and to commit to never making that a part of the story. I’ve done plenty of races, won a few. People started suggesting this runners product or that trail product to take with me. That convinced me that I’d do it with trail mix, M&M’s, Cheetos and Oreo’s, stuff I would never do in a race. I dismissed some the basics of planning so much that someone who I love and loves me genuinely feared that maybe I was hiding my true intentions and was planning on having a last hurrah out there. That was not the case.
I trained. I trained harder than I ever have for a race not because I wanted the time to matter but because I wanted there to be a very small if any percentage of it that I wasn’t just smiling to be going in and OUT of the Grand Canyon ALIVE. There are some steep hills in Austin, I did repeats on them 2-3 times a week, with the kid born 8/8/80 doing 8 repeats on some of the toughest hills always starting on top and finishing on top since that’s the way the Grand Canyon was going to work. I ran the longest trail training run of my life. As difficult as it sounds, I practiced eating trail mix, M&M’s, Oreo’s and Cheetos.
I put together the longest playlist of my life to put out there, with full intention to not put it on until it was getting hard or time to think whichever came first. It was about 18 hours long with songs from pre-brain cancer, post brain cancer, a gigantic percentage of which have nods in this blog if not downright plagiarizing\. I didn’t take a map believing the trail is fairly intuitive but ultimately got talked into putting one on my phone. I went in there believing in faith, hope and love and the belief that this ghost I’d made in my head, there has to come a day where I must, MUST, stop letting them scare me.
We flew out there and saw the place and I just stared and stared and stared. I felt so small, unworthy to being next to it, certainly unworthy of having had the arrogance to believe it should be so selfishly stained with me having wanted to die there, and genuinely knowing that it was my honor to step there, and the tens of thousands of steps I’d be taking across it unlike my usual runs was something more than just one foot in front of the other.
We had an alarm set for 2:45 AM to try get to the park to start at 4:30. I woke up before that staring at the ceiling, nervous, anxious, but not at all tired. There were friends there when we got to the start who were getting their gear ready, the people I’d come with were ready to go but after a hug Jackie and a high five and fist bumps to some friend's old and new, I knew I was going on my own. I hate doing almost anything on my own, for as much as I run, it’s a tiny percentage of the time that I run alone but this one needed to be on me.
So I ran down hill in the dark, though the friend behind me, said my hesitancy kept me going about the speed he was walking down. I ran across, questioned whether the flatness of the middle meant I’d gone the wrong way (I hadn’t). Finally, finally, as I started going up hill, I put the music on and the first song was one where the universe was kind enough to give me a hint, it was a song called “What comes next?” I started to sing, to enjoy, to take in the beauty, keeping one earbud off to hear the music in one, and the water of the river in the other. I’d passed my partner and some friends at one point. I missed the last water stop before the hill and ran out of water for the last few miles before getting to the North Rim. This made for some questioning but once I got to the top refilled and started going back down. I’d get passed and pass again on the way down with songs that I used to listen. Many songs had memories to deal with, fight again, accept my impending doom with brain cancer alternating with each other. More affection from Jackie and fist bumps with the friends like Allison, Fletcher, Mallory, Brian and the Higg’s as we crossed paths on the way up and down made it a shared experience.
Somewhere along the heat of the day, in the bottom of the canyon, my sweat was so bad that I was having a hard time seeing from the salt continuously in my eyes. If it had been a race, I would have pushed then, gotta get this done but long before the body demanded it, the hopeful parts of my heart and brain reminded me of the purpose of this so I preemptively and purposely slowed down to look at the river and the Canyon and that flower and that lizard and those hikers. But I started thinking about life and death and LIFE and death and the more I thought the more I was able to focus on life. Death was inevitable but a few times because I’d miss the focus, I’d miss some of my life itself long before death. I remembered that race, those moments with Kiana, that kiss, that drink, that media piece, that volunteer, that funeral, those meal, that poker game, that joke, that OTHER really inappropriate joke, that friend, that ride, that trip. For about as long as it’s ever taken me to run a marathon, I thought and thought and finally when I got across the Canyon, I was done remembering. Like the iPod shuffle, the memories had come randomly but I knew as it was time to start ascending, that the past while never fully gone, the ghost of this Canyon was a being left in it. As I shared this thought, someone reminded me the place I stopped thinking about the ghost, the place I’d focus on the future was called Phantom Ranch.
On the way up, I realized I’d shaken the ghost of the Grand Canyon but realized I still have others, though smaller ghosts to face. That’s what will come next when I get back to regular life but as I started the ascent there was a long sandy section and there really wasn’t much running after that. There was hiking with me and two guys with poles kept passing each other on different sections. There was someone telling me I’d been left a message of love, there was someone who had passed me who was struggling on the way up, there was someone helping someone else who was struggling. There were absolutely stunning, gorgeous views that I couldn’t quite realize whether it was the hike, the elevation gain, or the just the beauty that was taking my breath away.
It was weird how they had signs that were blatantly lying when they said 4.5 miles, 3 miles and 1.5 miles till the exit because I’m sure it was longer than that with that steepness, surely they meant as the crow flies cause it sure felt further. But when I finally thought the end was near, I started to run. I was wrong; that wasn’t the end but rather than quit there I ran till the end. It felt so entirely appropriate for that to happen that between those two sections it wasn’t the sweat that blurred my vision and I couldn’t have been too dehydrated because I still got tears in my eyes. But I came out smiling. The Grand Canyon is amazing. I didn’t beat it; that’s impossible. But life and hope had been kind enough to where the ghost of it had and has not beaten me.
There was no medal or tshirt for this (though someone from the group had gotten us hats that said rim job on there; if you like me a week ago don’t know what that is, don’t google it). I didn’t win anything by doing this but I did lose some emotional baggage and hiked out bright angel trail, finding what I’d been waiting too long on. I saw a few more people in before my body temperature and stomach objected to rest by it.
So I didn’t go to the Grand Canyon to climb in and die but to continue to die, I went there to live. I did in fact climb in and OUT twice in one day, catching the sunrise along the way and the sunrise after the finish emphatically to enjoy more trips around the sun and more turns of the earth. I came out for the same reason I hope to get every morning, to LIVE.
