BEGINNINGS
Rim to Rim to Rim defines bucket list. Fifty miles through the heart of the Grand Canyon with ten thousand feet of climbing — it’s the run that got me running. Getting there took a year and a half and one pandemic.
With shut shutdown looming, I spiraled. To still my mind, I’ve always chased the vanishing point — moments when everything drops away and I can just be. That pursuit takes me to places that force focus - where mistakes matter. On rock, ice, and snow, I have pushed limits. With COVID stress beating down, I pushed harder than ever - far harder than my middle age body ha any right to handle. Despite paddling in that sea of risk, my breakpoint came in a strip-lit gym, doing an interval workout. Enough to still the demons - but only just.
Powering through burpees and box jumps, gloom began to lift. Then, sprints. I’m not a runner - wasn’t a runner. I ran in service of my goals - fitness, fastness, training, getting the ball in the goal. A step back, tension-coil, engaging all the power I could muster. And SNAP - a whipping crack through the gym. Sharp, violent. I was almost certain it came from me.
Yup - I crumpled in white-hot, all-consuming, Dorothy-in-flight intensity as pain ripped up my calf. Then, just a moment later, it was gone. Vanished. No pain, no pull, no trace. Except the gym had gone still. Music cut. People frozen mid-rep, all eyes on me. A man stared down at me - sheet white. “You heard that, right?” “The… whole gym did,” he stuttered, saucer-eyed. Okay. This is real. I’m in trouble. Look down. No - it’s gonna be bad. Do it. I did it. No bone. No blood. Just a leg - skinny and pale.
In a dream state of adrenaline, I stood. I took a step. And I had just enough time on my way back to the floor to realize that my calf was completely out of business. No liquidation sale - just gone. Some toxic mix of shock and embarrassment took over. I stumbled to my feet, mumbled something unintelligible and got the hell out of the gym. Not proud of this, but I hobbled to my car, started the engine, and drove myself to the hospital. My left foot flopping and useless, diagnosis wasn't challenging.
The day before shutdown, I hobbled into surgery for a fully ruptured Achilles Tendon. I got home, and my new reality settled in. Fixing a tendon takes time—and stillness. I’m not great at stillness, or patience. The leg withered. Just walking again took months. We all wallowed during the shutdown - but I really leaned in. Then, Jeb called. In high school, Jeb taught me to climb, and we’ve scared each other through all sorts of adventures through the years. He decided I needed a goal. Something big and ridiculous - particularly for a guy who still couldn’t walk. I had recently rafted the Grand Canyon, and before I could stop myself, the words slipped out: “Rim to Rim to Rim?” Jeb committed on the spot. In my condition, it was more fantasy than goal. Maybe hubris dressed as ambition. But, I liked the dream. One step became two, then ten, then more. And I could walk again. Each day, each step, there was only the next and the next. And finally - a year and a half after the great snap, Jeb and I meet at chasm’s edge.
4:15 a.m., hotel alarm blaring. The invariable, inevitable urge to turn it off and sleep. No one should be doing this. And not at this hour. I get up, dragging reality back from dream. A groggy drive to the lodge and then bus out to the South Kaibob trailhead. I’m not strong enough, trained enough - good enough. Doubt sinks and settles as I sneak peeks at the golden gods around me. Everyone — Jeb included — looks fitter, stronger - like they belong. I’m the faker. The imposter, awkward in my running kit. Movement drags me back. Headlights on, we descend, mist diffusing silhouettes of juniper and pinyon. Sunrise at the Grand Canyon. From darkness, clean-line contours of ancient stone - gold-red. So real it feels fake. Still. Scale beyond comprehension.
Down we go. I love the mountains. That's my comfort zone. Ozone-charged air - molecules moving faster - ascent energizes. It’s gain, effort, achievement - pushing that little bit closer to the sun. Dropping into the Canyon is surrender. A fall into deep time. It is uniquely vulnerable. It is weight, and press, and presence. It is slow power. We skitter deeper. Jeb and I take pictures. We laugh. We meet other runners - most pass us. And we fall into our planet’s adolescence - undulating layers, ancient seas, the beauty of becoming. It’s weird and wonderful. And my feet hurt.
Descending, the pull grows - a slow, awesome timesense - millions of years laid bare. The drive to make miles succumbs to sensation. The burnt smell of high desert. The flit and fall of swifts overhead. The trail steepens to switchbacks. Through a tunnel and back into the shock-light of day. Above, layers of deep brown sandstone. Below, silk grey rock cambers and bends - Vishnu Shist. In the space between, over a billion years have vanished. This is the Great Unconformity - a gap that exists everywhere on earth. Below you, right now, no matter where you are, a billion years of history are missing. It’s an impossible number - more time than multicellular life has existed. One quarter of Earth’s story - gone. There are theories. They are fascinating. I leave them to more knowledgeable writers.
Does my knowing impact the sensation of passing through the Canyon’s basement rocks? I can’t say. But I feel more weight. A deeper silence. A crushing sense of age. And we hit bottom. The Colorado River winds, silent and immense, as we step onto the bridge. I walk the span. Look out. Breathe in. I pull in the river's power and play - crystal froth on emerald swells. Silken flow masking monumental force. And even the Colorado —this ancient, relentless presence— is now cut and cornered. We damned it. Held it back. Created Lake Powell above. We control this flow. Even here—so far down, so deep in time — we’ve marked the earth.
Jeb and I reach Phantom Ranch — an oasis tucked into the bones of the world. Cabins, trees, picnic tables. A canteen selling lemonade and postcards. Real toilets. Running water. Shade. After miles of silence and stone, it feels like a hallucination. Like summer camp dropped into a cathedral. We refill bottles and take it in. This began as a mission. R2R2R. But now, deep in the Canyon, it feels like something else. It's not about making time, but how I could stay longer. On a whim, I ask the operator if any rooms are available. Phantom Ranch books out a year in advance. Silly to even ask. But I do - and there are. I glance at Jeb. He nods.
Excitement. And - right after - the ego sting that the other me - the outside me - won’t be able to boast about finishing R2R2R in one go. Strava will be disappointed - all 30 of my followers devastated. No one cares, and it still eats at me. I do it anyway. We’ll run north, turn and have a place to stay the night. We run the slow incline along Bright Angel Creek. The canyon narrows — black walls press in, then open to the high desert. With time on our side, Jeb and I veer off toward Ribbon Falls (Chimik’yana’kya Deya’). From the trail, it doesn’t look like much. Just a crease in the stone. We bushwhack in — scrambling, ducking branches — and emerge into an oasis.
A waterfall spills from the ledge above, cascading mist and prismatic light. Over millennia, minerals from that fall have built a moss-covered travertine dome thirty feet tall. The falls have shaped their own altar. We wander up and behind the falls - visions of the canyon misting through the spray. I put my hand to the moss, springy and succulent, a soft wonder amid angle and spire. Chimik’yana’kya Deya’ is a place of origin for the Zuni. That feels true. There’s weight here. Something ancient, fertile and fearsome. The falls pound into green moss and the pool below, a resonant sound bath. Lighted mist softens the cliffs beyond. What better place to come into this world?
We wander back to the trail, awe-shocked. We run. We hike. The ascent to the North Rim slips into gray - majesty overload. Green edges the canyon as we climb a trail hewn into rock, and pain settles on us both. Heading back toward Phantom, ache bears down. Just before nightfall, I make out swifts shooting through a light rain. I surf a sea of pain into limbo. Step on step. Turn on turn. A shock-white sky rips me back - lightning-lit. A jolt across the universe. No sound. Locked deep in the canyon, it feels like a system glitch. One more reminder that this place runs on different code.
And finally - Phantom Ranch. We shuffle into our cabin and devour the most delicious stew in the history of stew. Later, I sprawl out on a picnic table, staring up at a great wash of stars pin-hole bright. I feel small. I feel open. Contented insignificance. I lie there, deep in the earth - rooted in a thrumming present. The stillness of rock. The slow, relentless rush of water. Frothing time. I exist. I am part of grand things. My body rejects sleep. I swim through half-dreams, phantom hallucinations. Sweating hot, ice cold. Fight and flight battle it out. Night lasts a lifetime. Lasts minutes.
Best breakfast ever. Eggs, sausage, pancakes, coffee! Jeb and I force tired legs to climb Bright Angel Trail - up the Canyon's face. Time and space feel slippery - reality hasn’t quite settled. And we switch up and back, rising through millennia - step by step. Emerging from liminal, reality hits. Laughter. High schoolers blast music. The murmur of conversation. The scratching and scraping of others. People-shock. And then - we’re done. Topped out. Back in the froth of humanity at the Canyon’s rim. A group of kids offers us watermelon - the taste sweet and strong. We fight for space with tourists, fight to hold grace. We turn from the Canyon. To the car, to the hotel, to dinner, to sleep. Whatever dreams may come - I want more of the Canyon’s reality.