The Grand Canyon & Theodore Roosevelt
©Bert Gildart: After overnighting at a marginally acceptable Navajo-managed campground, fixing a flat tire on our trailer, studying a sign that seems to epitomizes the effects that shunning (see immediate right photo) might have — but then having a delightful and classy meal at the Cameron Trading Post, where this reservation-managed post has created an incredible historical retrospective — we have finally drifted on and now find ourselves in the Grand Canyon, a park revered by Theodore Roosevelt. (We’ll get to him in a minute!)
L TO R: Shunning makes a powerful statement and sometimes it works; Historic Cameron Trading Post, well operated by Navajo Tribe.
As my sister says, “Bert, you seem to know where you’re going only after you’ve spent a couple of days there.”
But now we’re here, and after a couple of days, we know what we’re going to do at least for the next few days. We’re going to explore Grand Canyon National Park, a place Roosevelt revered.
BRYCE INTIMATE BUT GRAND CANYON ALOOF
But if Bryce was intimate, the Grand Canyon is aloof, so overwhelming that it is hard to know what to do – and where to begin. Still if anyone is expecting that we will report, saying that our sour economy has affected area fascination that will not be the case.
Grand Canyon attracts five million visitors annually, and it seems as though three of them are here right now.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
What we hoping to do is arrive at some kind of statement which we can use for a comparison between today and the base-line statement Theodore Roosevelt made so long ago.
“In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”
View from along Rim Trail, near Mather Point
Looking out over the canyon, this man’s eloquence seems to summarize it all. Despite what my sister says we know we’ll be here several days more, and will report our conclusions.
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AIRSTREAM TRAVELS THIS TIME LAST YEAR
*Billings, Montana’s Trailhead
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(You can order our new books (shown below ) from Amazon — or you can order them directly from the Gildarts. Bert will knock a dollar off the list price of $16.95, but he must add the cost of book-rate mailing and the mailer, which are $2.25. The grand total then is $18.20. Please send checks to Bert Gildart at 1676 Riverside Road, Bigfork, MT 59911.)
