The Two Towers: The Dead Marshes of the Somme

In my first Lord of the Rings article on Black Gate, a commenter described the book as "tasting of ashes" and attributed it to Prof. Tolkien's experiences during the First World War. I don't taste the ashes, but there are parts of the trilogy that reek heavily of them. He had managed to defer joining the army (as an officer) until he graduated in 1915. This meant he missed the early portion of the war - the Marne, Loos - but it meant he literally had his baptism of fire during the Somme Offensive. 

Initiated to relieve the German pressure on the French at Verdun, the Somme Offensive lasted from July 1, 1916, thru November 18, 1916. Tolkien was there until nearly the end, only being invalided out in October after contracting trench fever. The opening day of the battle is the deadliest day in British history. There were 60,000 casualties with 20,000 killed. The final casualties of the offensive between the British, French, and German armies were over one million.

Tolkien's children said, "he would occasionally talk of being at the front: of the horrors of the first German gas attack, of the utter exhaustion and ominous quiet after a bombardment, of the whining scream of the shells, and the endless marching, always on foot, through a devastated landscape, sometimes carrying the men's equipment as well as his own to encourage them to keep going." Of his close friends, only one survived the war. The United Kingdom, with a population of about 42,000,000 when the war started, lost almost 900,000 dead. That all this might permeate The Lord of the Rings isn't surprising.

 

Crossing the Dead Marshes by Ted Nasmith

Presently it grew altogether dark: the air itself seemed black and heavy to breathe. When lights appeared Sam rubbed his eyes: he thought his head was going queer. He first saw one with the corner of his left eye, a wisp of pale sheen that faded away; but others appeared soon after: some like dimly shining smoke, some like misty flames flickering slowly above unseen candles; here and there they twisted like ghostly sheets unfurled by hidden hands. But neither of his companions spoke a word.

At last Sam could bear it no longer. ‘What’s all this, Gollum?’ he said in a whisper. ‘These lights? They’re all round us now. Are we trapped? Who are they?’

Gollum looked up. A dark water was before him, and he was crawling on the ground, this way and that, doubtful of the way. ‘Yes, they are all round us,’ he whispered. ‘The tricksy lights. Candles of corpses, yes, yes. Don’t you heed them! Don’t look! Don’t follow them! Where’s the master?’

Sam looked back and found that Frodo had lagged again. He could not see him. He went some paces back into the darkness, not daring to move far, or to call in more than a hoarse whisper. Suddenly he stumbled against Frodo, who was standing lost in thought, looking at the pale lights. His hands hung stiff at his sides; water and slime were dripping from them.

‘Come, Mr. Frodo!’ said Sam. ‘Don’t look at them! Gollum says we mustn’t. Let’s keep up with him and get out of this cursed place as quick as we can – if we can!’

‘All right,’ said Frodo, as if returning out of a dream. ‘I’m coming. Go on!’

Hurrying forward again, Sam tripped, catching his foot in some old root or tussock. He fell and came heavily on his hands, which sank deep into sticky ooze, so that his face was brought close to the surface of the dark mere. There was a faint hiss, a noisome smell went up, the lights flickered and danced and swirled. For a moment the water below him looked like some window, glazed with grimy glass, through which he was peering. Wrenching his hands out of the bog, he sprang back with a cry. ‘There are dead things, dead faces in the water,’ he said with horror. ‘Dead faces!’

Gollum laughed. ‘The Dead Marshes, yes, yes: that is their name,’ he cackled. ‘You should not look in when the candles are lit.’

‘Who are they? What are they?’ asked Sam shuddering, turning to Frodo, who was now behind him.

‘I don’t know,’ said Frodo in a dreamlike voice. ‘But I have seen them too. In the pools when the candles were lit. They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them.’ Frodo hid his eyes in his hands. ‘I know not who they are; but I thought I saw there Men and Elves, and Orcs beside them.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Gollum. ‘All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs. The Dead Marshes. There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Sméagol was young, when I was young before the Precious came. It was a great battle. Tall Men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking. They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping.’

The Dead Marshes by Alan Lee

 

‘But that is an age and more ago,’ said Sam. ‘The Dead can’t be really there! Is it some devilry hatched in the Dark Land?’

‘Who knows? Sméagol doesn’t know,’ answered Gollum. ‘You cannot reach them, you cannot touch them. We tried once, yes, precious. I tried once; but you cannot reach them. Only shapes to see, perhaps, not to touch. No precious! All dead.’

Sam looked darkly at him and shuddered again, thinking that he guessed why Sméagol had tried to touch them. ‘Well, I don’t want to see them,’ he said. ‘Never again! Can’t we get on and get away?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Gollum. ‘But slowly, very slowly. Very carefully! Or hobbits go down to join the Dead ones and light little candles. Follow Sméagol! Don’t look at lights!’

from The Passage of the Marshes 

Scenes from the Fellowship

 

He lifted his heavy eyes and saw leaning over him a huge willow-tree, old and hoary. Enormous it looked, its sprawling branches going up  like reaching arms with many long-fingered hands, its knotted and twisted trunk gaping in wide fissures that creaked faintly as the boughs moved. The leaves fluttering against the bright sky dazzled him, and he toppled over, lying where he fell upon the grass.

He turned, and there in the cold glow he saw lying beside him Sam, Pippin, and Merry. They were on their backs, and their faces looked deathly pale; and they were clad in white. About them lay many treasures, of gold maybe, though in that light they looked cold and unlovely. On their heads were circlets, gold chains were about their waists, and on their fingers were many rings. Swords lay by their sides, and shields were at their feet. But across their necks lay one long naked sword.

The dark figure streaming with fire raced towards them. The orcs yelled and poured over the stone gangways. Then Boromir raised his horn and blew. Loud the challenge rang and bellowed, like the shout of many throats under the cavernous roof. For a moment the orcs quailed and the fiery shadow halted. Then the echoes died as suddenly as a flame blown out by a dark wind, and the enemy advanced again.

'Over the bridge!' cried Gandalf, recalling his strength. 'Fly! This is a foe beyond any of you. I must hold the narrow way. Fly!' Aragorn and Boromir did not heed the command, but still held their ground, side by side, behind Gandalf at the far end of the bridge.

'Behold the Argonath, the Pillars of the Kings!' cried Aragorn. 'We shall pass them soon. Keep the boats in line, and as far apart as you can! Hold the middle of the stream!'

   As Frodo was borne towards them the great pillars rose like towers to meet him. Giants they seemed to him, vast grey figures silent but threatening. Then he saw that they were indeed shaped and fashioned: the craft and power of old had wrought upon them, and still they preserved through the suns and rains of forgotten years the mighty likenesses in which they had been hewn. Upon great pedestals founded in the deep waters stood two great kinds of stone: still with blurred eyes and crannied brows they frowned upon the North. The left hand of each was raised palm outwards in gesture of warning; in each right hand there was an axe; upon each head there was a crumbling helm and crown. Great power and majesty they still wore, the silent wardens of a long-vanished kingdom. Awe and fear fell upon Frodo, and he cowered down, shutting his eyes and not daring to look up as the boat drew near. Even Boromir bowed his head as the boats whirled by, frail and fleeting as little leaves, under the enduring shadow of the sentinels of Númenor. So they passed into the dark chasm of the Gates.

   Then Boromir had come leaping through the trees. He had made them fight. He slew many of them and the rest fled. But they had not gone far on the way back when they were attacked again, by a hundred Orcs at least, some of them very large, and they shot a rain of arrows: always at Boromir. Boromir had blown his great horn till the woods rang, and at first the Orcs had been dismayed and had drawn back; but when no answer but the echoes came, they had attacked more fiercely than ever.

Howard Andrew Jones, RIP

I don't have anything significant to add to the eulogies for Howard Andrew Jones who passed away the other day. He was one of the best writers of swords & sorcery as well as one of its greatest historians. His editing and publishing of the stories of Harold Lamb remains an important recovery of some of the primary inspirational bodies of work for the field.

I've written, ad nauseam, before about how I started writing about and reviewing S&S. A decade and a half or more ago, there was a small explosion of new authors writing brand new stories. Black Gate seemed to foster the very best, including James Enge, John Fultz, and Howard Andrew Jones. 

As I started writing, I interacted with Howard on his website. He wrote lively pieces on hard-boiled crime stories about as often as he did about Fritz Leiber and C.L. Moore. Occasionally, there were posts about adventure fiction. Somehow it turned out we were both reading some of Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood at the same time. He suggested we read them all and write about them for Black Gate. It was an exciting suggestion and I'm still pleased with the results. 

Over the years we corresponded several more times, usually at his initiation - I'm a poor correspondent and always feel like I'm overstepping my bounds with people I've only come to know electronically. When his Ring-Sworn trilogy came out, he asked if I would interview his son, Darian, who'd made a promotional video for the first volume, For the Killing of Kings - one of the great fantasy titles, in my opinion.

Later, when he became the editor of Tales from the Magician's Skull, he hooked me up with Bill Ward and for several years I wrote monthly book review the mag's site. It paid me a few dollars, but the real thing, was for the first time since I'd stopped my weekly column at Black Gate, I was reading S&S regularly again. 

And now, when his Hanuvar books had let him reach the place where the Dabir and Asim stories should have taken him a decade ago, Howard's gone. This is a blow for S&S, but more importantly, it's a blow for his family and friends. From the eulogies written by people who knew him well, he was clearly an incredibly supportive and kind man. He will be missed. 

Tim Kirk's 1975 Tolkien Calendar

 The first official Middle-earth calendar by an artist other than J.R.R. Tolkien himself was Tim Kirk's 1975 one published by Ballantine Books. I first encountered Tim Kirk through his great maps and illustrations in the Robert E. Howard paperbacks from the seventies. I only learned from Thomas Parker's Blackgate article about the calendar that the calendar's art started as Kirk's master's thesis. 

Kirk ended up a senior artist at Disney, working on rides, resorts, and marketing. It's his early fantasy art, though, that I like and imagine is what he'll be best remembered for. Here are his Tolkien calendar illustrations with quotes from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Then Smaug really did laugh -- a devastating sound which shook Bilbo to the floor, while far up in the tunnel the dwarves huddled together and imagined that the hobbit had come to a sudden and nast end.

"You ask first," he said, because he had not had time to think of a riddle.

So Gollum hissed:

What has roots as nobody sees,

Is taller than trees,

Up, up it goes,

And yet it never grows?

Before long, so great was his speed, they could see him as a spark of fire rushing towards them and growing ever huger and more bright, and not the most foolish doubted that the prophecies had gone rather wrong. 

Frodo did not answer at once. Then he spoke slowly. "I know that haste is needed, yet I cannot choose. The burden is heavy. Give me an hour longer, and I will speak. Let me be alone!"

They went along the lane, until they saw the thatched roofs of a large house and farm-buildings peeping out among the trees ahead. The Maggots, and the Puddifoots of Stock, and most of the inhabitants of the Marish, were house-dwellers; and this farm was stoutly built of brick and had a high wall all around it. There was a wide wooden gate opening out of the wall into the lane.

Pippin felt curiously attracted by the well. While the others were unrolling blankets and making beds against the walls of the chamber, as far as possible from the hole in the floor, he crept to the edge and peered over. A chill air seemed to strike his face, rising from invisible depths. Moved by a sudden impulse he groped for a loose stone, and let it drop. He felt his heart beat many times before there was any sound. Then far below, as if the stone had fallen into deep water in some cavernous place, there came a plunk, very distant, but magnified and repeated in the hollow shaft.

They stooped over the dark water. At first they could see nothing. Then slowly they saw the forms of the encircling mountains mirrored in a profound blue, and the peaks were like plumes of white flame above them; beyond there was a space of sky. There like jewels sunk in the deep shone glinting stars, though sunlight was in the sky above. Of their own stooping forms no shadow could be seen.

'And you, Ring-bearer,' she said, turning to Frodo. 'I come to you last who are not last in my thoughts. For you I have prepared this.' She held up a small crystal phial: it glittered as she moved it, and rays of white light sprang from her hand

The Gate was shut. All night watchmen on the walls heard the rumour of the enemy that roamed outside, burning field and tree, and hewing any man that they found abroad, living or dead. The numbers that had already passed over the River could not be guess in the darkness, but when morning, or its dim shadow, stole over the plain, it was seen that even fear by night had scarcely over-counted them. The plain was dark with their marching companies, and as far as the eyes could strain in the mirk there sprouted, like a could fungus-growth, all about the beleaguered city great camps of tents, black or sombre red.

Presently two orcs came into view. One was clad in ragged brown and was armed with a bow of horn; it was of a small breed, black-skinned, with wide snuffling nostrils: evidently a tracker of some kind. The other was a big fighting-orc, like those of Shagrat's company, bearing the token of the Eye. He also had a bow at his back and carried a short broad-headed spear. As usual they were quarrelling, and being of different breeds they used the Common Speech after their fashion.

The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone.

Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water.

More Stephen King

 Stephen King

Fiction

1. Carrie (1974) - good with even better movie made from it
2. 'Salem's Lot (1975) - my favorite vampire book 
3. The Shining (1977) - his best, with nary a wasted word
4. The Stand (1978) - two times I tried but couldn't finish. bloated and surprisingly dull in parts. The beginning, though, man, oh, man.
5. The Dead Zone (1979) - very good - how do you make Lee Harvey Oswald the hero? also, challenge me if you like, but Cronenberg's movie is the best King adaptation 
6. Firestarter (1980) - disposable
7. Pet Sematary (1983) - way overrated
8. The Talisman (1984) w/Peter Straub - good enough
9. IT (1986) - good parts mixed with very bad parts and waaaay too long
10. The Tommyknockers (1987) - he can't remember writing this which I think is for the best
11. The Dark Half (1989) - very good
12. Insomnia (1994) - goodish but long and a little pat with its human villain
13. The Regulators (1996) - not good
14. Bag of Bones (1998) - solid if, again, pat in its villains
15. Dreamcatcher (2001) - nuts and not really good, but big, stoopid fun
16. From a Buick 8 (2002) - very good
17. The Colorado Kid (2005) - infuriating fun about an unanswerable mystery 
18. Cell (2006) - goodish, but feels like a over-long short story 
19. Lisey's Story (2006)  - I found it more interesting than good, but decent enough. some very good non-fantastic parts of loss
20. Duma Key (2008) - eh, but only because I still expect more 
21. The Outsider (2018) - very good
22. Revival (2014) - very good and the bleakest of his books. It makes Pet Semetary, which I admittedly feel meh about, look like a Sunday School picnic
23. Later (2021) - sure, talking to the dead's been done, but King handles its very well. Mixed together with his hardboiled tendencies from the last twenty years equals good results
24. The Institute (2019) - What if Firestarter wasn't crappy and it the plot had world-wide implications? This is what you'd get. His prose smooth and effortless without being dumb or simple. 
25. Mr. Mercedes (2014) - A thriller, pitting a psycopathic young killer against a fat, retired police detective with suicidal thoughts. It's not anything new, but, like with The Institute, King's writing - the prose, the characters, the plot - are very good and there's real tension and surprises. I'm looking forward to getting the two sequels, Finders Keepers (2015), and End of Watch (2016) in the mail next week.

Collections

1. Night Shift (1978) - perfect
2. Skeleton Crew (1985) - close to perfect
3. Four Past Midnight (1990) - okay
4. Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) - some good stuff 
5. Hearts in Atlantis (1998) - as a longtime hearts player, I love this
6. Everything's Eventual (2001) - okay
7. Full Dark, No Stars (2010) - not bad at all
8. If It Bleeds (2020)  - I only read the title story, which features Holly Gibney, and it's terrific

Nonfiction

1. Danse Macabre (1981) - important look at horror as a genre 
2. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000) - helpful

King is the writer who almost single-handedly turned horror into a marketable genre. It wasn't by accident: his early works mix pulp roots with literary aspirations and eyes wide-open on the bestseller lists. He wasn't the first person to do this, but he was the most industrious and simply better than most of his rivals.

His first five novels (as much as I don't like The Stand, its importance to his career and the genre are undeniable. Most people I know who've read it totally dug it.) and first two story collections are forces that any examination of modern horror has to address. If you read horror and have somehow missed them it's best to rectify that.

There's a definite drop off in quality in the eighties due to addiction troubles (supposedly he has no memory of writing The Tommyknockers, though that just might be wishful thinking). As good as I think some of his later books are, they lack the immediacy and novelty of those first six books. Those early ones, though, man, oh, man are they fun.

PS: I just recently read his last novel, The Outsider, and it cooks. More than any of his other books that I can think of, it feels very much a part of the horror paperback original scene of the seventies and eighties - done really, really well. In these days of glittery vampires and torture porn gore, it's a real standout.

Still, it's not as much of a punch to the gut as his early books. I attribute that to the effect of decades, and decades of horror written by divers hands. When King kicked things off over forty years ago, if not the first explorer, he was definitely the most important conquistador in the lands of horror. The trails he opened and styles he conquered have long since been traveled and done to death. It's incredibly hard for new horror book to strike with the same potency of King's earliest books, even his own.

Since writing this, we've had a plague and I've read three more King books, all new, and all very good. The first, best, and most brutal is Revival. It's dedicated to Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Donald Wandrei, Fritz Leiber, August Derleth, Shirley Jackson, Robert Bloch, and Peter Straub, as well as Arthur Machen. To the latter-most, King writes that his "short novel The Great God Pan has haunted me all my life." It draws much of its inspiration from the sort of cosmic horror those authors all worked with and mixes it with King's own more human-scaled concerns.

Much of the novel is concerned simply with the life and times of its narrator, Jamie Morton, as he moves from the sixties to the present. The hororor elements only emerge gradually, and their slow emergence through Jamie's story lets the atmosphere build gradually before coming together in a furious burst of dark electricity that leaves him and the reader feeling gutted. Of all the newer King I've read, this might be the one to stand alongside his best early books.

Later is the third of his Hard Case Crime releases. The others are The Colorado Kid and Joyland. I like the first a lot and own but still need to read the second. It's a good, decent supernatural thriller mixed with a crime story involving police corruption and drug dealers. It isn't groundbreaking, but King's tight storytelling, and the ease with which the narrator's voice captures the reader makes for a good, quick read.

The Institute is a book I can't totally explain. Not the plot, that's straightforward enough. What eludes me is exactly why I plowed thru a 650-page book in only three or four days for the first time in a very long time. I guess he just knows how to grab me. It's really all I can say. He builds up the suspense, knows how to throw me off kilter every time I think I know where things are going, and creates characters that are captivating, be they heroes, villains, or someone in betwee. When I find myself staying up to all hourse because I've "only" got 150 pages left, I can only conider the book a massive success. That said, it's less a horror story than a paranormal thriller that recalls his own Firestarter and John Farris' The Fury. It's much (much!) better than both and much more disturbing, drawing on the torture scandals and black sites of the War on Terror.  

Most times when I read a Stephen King book, I find myself compelled to pick up another one. That's what I've done right now. I've finally put Mr. Mercedes (2014) on my nightstand and will probably jump right into Joyland (2013) afterwards. If Mr. Mercedes is any good, and from all I've read, it is, I'll follow up with its sequels, Finders Keepers (2015) and End of Watch (2016), and then his latest, Holly.

Battle of Olustee: Road Trip During the Plague, Pt 2

Olustee Battlefield, Feb 2021

We've been going to St. Augustine for about ten years and I always wanted to take the hour-and-a-half drive to the Olustee battlefield. Finally, in 2021 as we hit the road west, I got the chance. 

With five thousand troops on each side, Olustee was the biggest battle fought in Florida during the Civil War. Most of coastal Florida had fallen to the United States by 1862, but the interior remained under Confederate control. In Feburary, 1864, against orders, General Truman Seymour launched an expedition against the Florida state capital, Tallahassee. On February 20th he came up against rebel forces in a marshy pine forest.

Seymour believed he'd only be facing state militia, troops he'd had little trouble with in the past. Unknown to him, the militia had been augmented by several thousand veteran troops sent down from Charleston. Confederate commander, General Joseph Finegan, tried to lure Seymour into attacking an entrenched position but this failed. Instead, both sides fed their reinforcements into the battle until ultimately the Union line broke. Despite the small size of the battle, based on the proportion of casualties, Olustee was one of the fiercest fights in the Civil War. The Union lost over 200 men killed, over 1,000 wounded, and 500 missing or captured out of about 5,000 soldiers. The Confederacy lost almost 100 killed and about 850 wounded.

Finegan made a final effort, sending troops against Seymour's retreating force but was held off by the  54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment (the regiment featured in the movie Glory (1989)) and the 35th United States Colored Infantry Regiment. Later, the 54th pulled a broken down train with wounded on it over three miles. Then, with the aid of horses, they towed it another ten miles back to Jacksonville.

We took a walk around the site, and had to take a couple of serious detours and get a bit soaked. As I said, it's a marshy area and the storms that had devastated Texas had dumped serious rain on Florida for several days. The problem with the Olustee Battlefield is that while still undeveloped and relatively unchanged terrain, the vegetation has changed. The battle was fought in open spaces in a pine forest near the swampy shore of Ocean Pond. Today, that same are is covered with saw palmetto. If I remember the park ranger's talk correctly, fires took out the pines and the saw palmettos moved in and took over. Still, walking the quiet, empty woods around the same time of year as the battle, it was possible to imagine what it must have been like when it was taken over by rifle and cannon fire, the shouts of attacking troops and the screams of the wounded. 

We spent an hour of so walking around the site, got back in our car and headed west. This was the first of seven battle sites we'd visit on the Great Road Trip of the Plague Year.

Road Trip During the Plague, Pt 1

In the canyon

Two and a half years ago, well into the Plague, my wife, the luminous Mrs. V, decided a short invitation to stay at someone's place in St. Augustine should be turned into the first leg of a massive road trip. We were both out of work with no clear indication of when we'd resume. It might be our only chance for a long time to take such an undertaking. 

The original plan was to drive to St. Augustine, then drive west to the Grand Canyon. Coming back, we'd swing a little further north and hit a string of Civil War sites and the Laura and Almanzo Wilder house in Mansfield, Missouri (Mrs. V is a huge fan. We've been to Mansfield before and it was something to see her and several other women almost in tears the first time they realized they were standing on the same linoleum Almanzo had put down and Laura had walked on). 

As soon as we hit St. Augustine, our plans fell apart. An ice storm had devastated Texas, knocking out the power grid across much of the state. Driving overland through Texas in the midst of that disaster was not going to happen. This was also pre-vaccine, so some states were still being obnoxious towards out-of-towners.

Mrs. V quickly came up with an alternate plan. First, we'd fly out to Phoenix and then drive up to the Grand Canyon. After flying back to St. Augustine, we'd drive west through Mississippi and Arkansas, loop back eastward at Mansfield, and come home thru Tennessee and West Virginia. It's what we did, and it was the best and longest road trip we've ever taken.

After a few days in St. Augustine, we flew out of Jacksonville. With masks on the entire flight, it was only slightly uncomfortable. It was pre-vaccine so many people were still overly nervous and the airlines were being hardcore to make . The flight was short and sweet and the view of Galveston and the rest of Texas from the air was fascinating. What we saw of Phoenix was soulless and desiccated. Lots of new buildings and dreary old concrete ones on great, wide, empty streets. 

The drive up to Grand Canyon Village was very nice. I'm not sure I'd ever realized how striking ochre and beige landscape could be. Flagstaff was mostly hotels, motels, and shopping plazas, but most of the drive was through largely unblemished plains and rocky escarpments. The horizon seemed further than it had ever seemed before and the February sky was a shocking azure.

We finally arrived at the Grand Canyon at dusk. We weren't sure where our hotel was, so we pulled into the first parking lot we encountered. I stepped out of the car and wondered where exactly the canyon was. Suddenly, as I turned around and my eyes adjusted to the evening's light, I realized it was fifteen feet beyond the front of our car. If you haven't seen it, imagine something carved jaggedly into the Earth's crust over ten miles across. Its walls are an array of colored layers, stretching out for miles and miles in both directions. Looking over the parking lot wall, we could just make out the bottom, thousands of feet below, in the fading light.

Now, I am not a hiker and I especially don't like hiking up elevations. Mrs. V's plan, though, had us hiking way down the canyon, twelve or thirteen miles along the floor, then back up. To say I was dubious of this plan is insufficient. My brain was shouting repeatedly that this was insane. Nonetheless, I acquiesced, out of love and out of one of my occasional flashes of a "why the heck not?" attitude.

To prepare a little, the next day we drove down to Sedona where we intended to take a hike onto and around a butte. It was a beautiful day and away from the touristy main part of Sedona, the land was beautiful, too. To be honest, it reminded me of some of the rides from Knotts Berry Farm I took when I was a little kid - and that was very cool. 

Rising out of the side of the butte is the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Built in 1954, the chapel was commissioned by rancher/sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude. It wasn't open to visitors that day, but the parking lot was. The only thing was, at 5:00 the lot was going to be locked and our car would be trapped if we hadn't returned by then. We had two and a half hours, though, so we were sure we could make it around and back in time. Ha!

The hike was unpleasant, Mrs. V got us off the often poorly-marked trails and lost two or three times. Fortunately, we managed to get back on track each time, but the clock was counting down. 

The views from the trail are impressive. I don't know how high up we were, but you could see all of Sedona and the surrounding mountains. We stopped several times to just look at the world moving below us. And the clock continued to tick.

 

During one of the periods of being lost, I told Mrs. V something I considered very important. I, from the bottom of my heart, from the depths of my soul, hated what we were doing. Despite the beauty of the butte, despite the wonderful views, I hated the hike. I hate all hikes. I do not and will not enjoy them. But, and this was important, I will do them because you want to.

 

I move slowly going uphill; it's just a fact of life. Years ago, hiking across Devon, Mrs. V would be hundreds of feet ahead of me as we climbed roads that felt damn near vertical. The same happened here. Increasingly, even as we knew we were near the end, it felt like we wouldn't make. With about fifteen minutes to go, she decided to take off and leave me behind. She made it, secured our car, and I wandered in about ten minutes later. It had been a near-run thing.

After the day's adventure, Mrs. V willingly cut down her ambitions for the Grand Canyon. We'd only go down to the bottom and then hike back up, a much more reasonable distance. We'd get up early, around six thirty, eat, then head off to the trailhead and begin our descent by seven thirty, or so. 

No proof against the cold

When we woke up it was freezing. It had been comfortable when we arrived at the Canyon, but it was late February and it gets cold out there. It was below freezing, ice had formed on the trails, and we had nothing remotely adequate to wear as you can see. 

We decided to hold off until it warmed up and do what we could do. In the end, we hiked about four miles from the Kachina Lodge along the South Rim to the South Kaibab Trail, ravens racing and swooping overhead. Once there, we hiked down the switchback trail along the Canyon wall about a mile and a half down and then back up again.

 

Switchback

The amazing engineering feat of the trail, the stunning vistas it afforded us, the quiet, only occasionally broken by bird calls, and the very cool mule trains we had to step aside for several times, almost made me like hiking.

Mules looking askance

Actually, I did love the hike. There are many wonderful natural places in America and I've been lucky enough to see some of them - the coast of Kauai, Glacier National Park, the Adirondacks - but I had never been to the Grand Canyon before. If you ever have the chance, go. 

From that first view from the parking lot to the last glimpse as we drove away, I remained stunned by the immensity and beauty of the place. None of my pictures do the least justice to those qualities, but here are a few for some sense of the place.

We left the Grand Canyon, drove back to Phoenix, and then flew to Jacksonville. After a few more days in St. Augustine, we hit the road for the third, and longest leg, of our trip.