Acceptance

The monthly travel boondoggle for supporters—with some midlife vertigo during a canyon adventure—plus the weekly three-plus things to love

The iPhone struggles with depth

The exposure was more than I anticipated, the trail more narrow than I liked.

For a moment, after a fifteen-minute descent into the Grand Canyon from the South rim, the best thing to do, maybe the only thing to do, was to lean my body against a boulder and grasp it with my fingertips, in case otherwise I went over and fell five-thousand feet, or worse, indulged an odd, shadowy corner of my impulses that felt intrigued about the possibility of tossing us into the same situation.

I explained all of this to my guide, and he said, nodding, “The French have a phrase for that. It translates to ‘the call of the void,’ I don’t remember the exact wording.”

I would’ve said something like l’appel du vide? But he was calmly standing on a rock outcropping only a few inches from the void, and I didn’t really have the wherewithal at that moment.

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Earlier this week, I visited the Grand Canyon while on assignment for Travel + Leisure. Have you seen it? It turns out the canyon is a bit more than suitably grand. “Jesus Christ” and “oh my god” were things I said aloud—loudly—when it first came into view, and I said similar things throughout the day.

Again, depth issues

I’d never seen the Canyon before, so I hired a guide to show me around. First, I thought of requesting a rim-to-rim hike, a long day’s adventure. Instead, I asked him to show me a half-day’s walk that would take us deep into the canyon and then back up, on a trail other tourists wouldn’t know about.

And I asked this without really picturing the trail, or thinking what might happen. After all, I’m fit, I’m curious, what could go wrong?