I cease to take a seat on a big rock hanging over the canyon and eat my peanut butter sandwich. I dangle my toes over the lip, staring into the chasm of rock upon rock, my awe eclipsed by terror as I unintentionally dislodge a couple of stones right into a free fall. I consider the Hopi, one of many 11 Indigenous tribes with ancestral claims to this land (the park administration has labored with these tribes on restoring their presence in latest a long time, however the horrifying displacement of tons of of 1000's of Native Americans haunts each side of its historical past). The Hopi folks consider that the canyon is a passage to the underworld, a spot made sacred by its proximity to dying — a warning not all the time heeded by the practically 5 million annual guests to the park.
The Grand Canyon is a harmful place. There have been reportedly 828 search-and-rescue makes an attempt within the park between 2018 and 2020, and it averages 12 fatalities per yr. Three weeks earlier than I arrive, the physique of a 57-year-old hiker was discovered 200 toes beneath the Boucher Trail close to Yuma Point, simply west of right here. It’s exhausting to not take into account his destiny as I watch a California condor divebomb the shadowy depths. Life and dying are twins, everyone knows that. But I’ve hardly ever stood so near the brink.
“Keep it in perspective,” my mother all the time mentioned; it was a relentless chorus all through my teenage years. I used to be a delicate youngster. As if summoned, a sprightly girl in her 60s walks previous and calls out a warning to me: “Be careful, kiddo!” I again away from the rim.
As I stroll, I like the shifting gentle illuminating the gradients of the canyon’s reverse partitions — differentiations that make manifest time itself, in accordance with the geology museum I uncover farther alongside at Yavapai Point. The schist and granite on the backside of the canyon are virtually two billion years previous, with youthful and youthful layers of sandstone, shale and limestone stacked on high in horizontal bands. In the nineteenth century, expeditions to the Grand Canyon helped geologists to disprove creationist myths in regards to the planet’s age. The canyon is time embodied.
Like me. My physique is layered, my previous selves a basis my complete life is constructed on. I used to really feel in a different way — when my siblings and I cleaned out Mom’s house after her dying, there wasn’t a photograph of me in sight. This had been at my request — on the time, I discovered previous images dysphoric and unattainable to reconcile. But I used to be later shaken by these empty squares of area, by the suggestion of erasure. I could also be completely different, however wasn’t I additionally the identical beaming youngster at a karate event, the identical excessive schooler squinting into the solar on commencement day?
The query felt pressing as a result of it wasn’t nearly me. It’s exhausting to reconcile my mom’s legacy — Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalist, civil rights activist, lifelong feminist, insistent eccentric, devoted mother or father — together with her fast, horrible decline. We have been extremely shut. She inspired my writing. She liked my queer mates. Our house turned a secure place for these with much less accepting dad and mom. She knew what it was prefer to be completely different and all the time fought for the underdog. When I advised her I used to be trans again in 2011, when lower than 10 p.c of Americans reported figuring out a transgender individual, she responded with a easy, good “I love you just the way you are.” She was my finest good friend.
I knew she drank, in fact — like all kids of alcoholics, I saved depend of her screwdrivers and observed how briskly she went by means of the wine within the fridge — however she was eminently purposeful, a lot in order that I didn’t understand how dangerous issues have been till it was too late. At least, that’s the comforting lie I inform myself now. The reality is, within the final months of her life, because the ammonia broke by means of her blood-brain barrier, she started behaving erratically: calling in any respect hours, confused and paranoid. Something horrible was occurring, and I did nothing to cease it. It was 2014, and Time journal had simply featured the actress Laverne Cox on its cowl, optimistically declaring a “trans tipping point” of visibility in common tradition that portended a sea change of social attitudes towards trans Americans. I felt the declaration was untimely, as my very own lived expertise as an out trans individual, at the same time as a cis-passing white one, was nonetheless principally outlined by concern. I used to be alone and felt decrease than ever, new to New York City and to being a person, recent off the painful breakup of a nine-year relationship, afraid my landlord would Google my title and alter his thoughts, afraid of touchdown within the emergency room and being made a topic of ridicule, afraid of spending the remainder of my life alone. I used to be additionally offended — trapped, in what sociologists name the “man box,” the constrictions of masculinity that tightened round me as I tried, day by day, to show my proper to exist. I used to be unrecognizable — a incontrovertible fact that haunted me in my mom’s dwindling days when, in her confusion, she misplaced her short-term reminiscence and me together with it. I suppose I hoped that by bringing her right here, I'd be capable of sew collectively the previous and current and discover a technique to maintain our complete historical past inside every.
