• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 424 0

of color that yank your attention around, jerking your head from here to there, and your depth perception and perspective go all out of whack. So Benjamin, meanwhile, is gazing out to the distance, trying to get a handle on the proportions. That’s when the fact—that this is merely one viewing point among many along the rim, not to mention the rim opposite—sinks in, and intellectually collected factoids succumb to the natural reality. The Grand Canyon is so enormous that it’s impossible to see it. To view the whole phenomenon in its entirety, you’d have to be so high above it that all definition and detail would be lost to you. I knew about bacteria and nanobots and other infinitesimally small things, but I’d never once thought something could be so big as to be equally invisible to the naked eye. I thought back to Galveston, where I’d observed people focusing too narrowly and missing the larger picture. Now I felt more sympathy for them.

For a bit of extra height, which somebody for some reason had thought would be helpful, the South Rim featured a faux Native American watchtower. The Park Service had commissioned its construction in the 1930s, crafting sandstone and rubble and steel into a giant imitation of Anasazi towers, as if local peoples had used it to gaze soulfully out over the Canyon for centuries. It was, in fact, on the registry of National Historic Landmarks, though we didn’t realize that at the time. Benjamin and I went inside, where I was jarred by an abrupt switch from unsullied vista to capitalist hunger for the contents of my wallet, as the bottom floor was a gift shop. I could have sworn we’d passed a gift shop near the parking lot, too. The idea of so many trinket purveyors populating what I’d naïvely assumed would be a meditation on Earth’s raw delights made me dizzy, dizzier even than when I later peered down from a ledge. Somehow we wended our way around the gnashing teeth with our pants pockets intact. Before ascending the stairway to higher levels of the watchtower, I turned momentarily from our spectating goal. Though there wasn’t much text in here, I couldn’t help but examine it now. Since my hopes for a text-free zone had been dashed, since I knew now that not even the Grand Canyon could stand as a last bastion of the world without our interference, I figured I might as well interfere. Nothing amiss that I could see, though, so we left the postcards and T-shirts and other gewgaws behind.

Up the first flight of stairs we went, the needy roar of the gift shop still echoing in our ears, when I saw it for the first time.

A little chalkboard sign greeted us, leaning at an angle to catch the eye of everyone coming up the stairs, ready to explain the significance of the Desert View Watchtower, built in the 1930s. Benjamin admired the artwork adorning the walls and noted the slightly narrower staircase that ran along the wall to get us to the next level.

Meanwhile, I’d noticed a typo. No, I’d noticed two on this thing. I pointed out “emense” for immense and “womens’” (a Filene’s Basement classic) for women’s.

One hundred typos. We’d done it. I’d found one hundred typos so far on this trip, and even when I’d meant to take a day off, here I’d continued the streak of no typoless days since I’d started on the quest. I pointed the problems out to Benjamin, who finally turned his attention from the upper levels (this level had no roof per se) to read the sign. The question, however, was, were we going to correct it now that we’d found it? “Can we put that off for a moment?” Benjamin requested. “I have a confession.”

Benjamin is afraid of heights. As a small child this had kept him from going up on those taller outlooks at amusement parks and forced him to refuse the chance to go up into the Empire State Building. Eventually he’d struck back against the fear. He started climbing trees when camping and then made himself go up, shaking legs and all, to those greatest heights at amusement parks, even letting a trusted friend drag him onto the roller coasters (which he instantly loved). He’d never gotten