North Rim, Grand Canyon National Park

We’ve watched as black and silver canyon walls disappeared in a full eclipse of the moon. We’ve seen huge thunderheads rise and gray-black sheets of rain, punctuated with bolts of lightening, blot out pieces of canyon one by one. Rain and hail have pelted us, but once the storms passed there have always been rainbows touching canyon rims and reaching to the sky. Once there was even a roaring waterfall from rain that had collected on a rim.

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon has it all when it comes to drama. It’s the one been-there-done-that place that my husband and I go back to year after year. It’s where we want our ashes to rest when our time on Earth is done. Summer provides the liveliest show, followed by the dramatic color of gold aspen fall and the silent white of winter. Spring is always good for surprises, such as the mid-April snowstorm that we once backpacked through. The area’s ancient history is everywhere, including outlines of old pueblo walls from the 12th- and 13th- centuries. Violet-green swallows are aerial acrobats that busy the air every morning and evening along with cigar swifts. Elk bugling charges the night with challenge in late summer and fall. Flocks of turkeys and herds of deer are commonplace.

Perhaps the reason the North Rim is our place of a lifetime, though, is the opportunity to experience all the beauty and drama in solitude. We’ve spent the Fourth of July and Labor Day on the North Rim with only the canyon for company. It’s a place with viewpoints that have no tracks to them and sunsets that can be experienced in total silence. It’s a combination of “Country Unbound” and “Paradise Found.” Every time we go back we feel awe, find peace, and feel grateful that we live only a few hours from its wonders.

—Cynthia Davis

Flagstaff-based Cynthia Davis is a librarian at Northern Arizona University.