Shadows are created by tall, vertical sandstone walls. Temperatures shift from oven to relief depending on where you stand. In the midst of an arid landscape tucked below the plateau of northern Arizona, this crevasse that slowly meanders north and steps its way down toward the Grand Canyon and empties into the Colorado River has a distinctive life and history unto itself. Home for centuries to the Havasupai people, it is still changing as underground streams of water seep and trickle out into its shadowy domain and carry both liquid and mineral with it to create stair-step cascades of cool water and slot canyons of wonder and solitude.
It was almost fifteen years ago during a sabbatical that I hiked eight miles from the gravel parking lot on top of the plateau down into the village of Supai and past it to camp between other-worldly blue green waterfalls symbiotically formed by the travertine and the water as gravity pulled them along. May was already hot as we descended thousands of feet, but the shadows of the cliffs offered pockets of respite as our group walked. It was three days and two nights of amazing adventure, shared by a small group of us led by two skilled guides who also cooked for us and encouraged us to do more than we might do otherwise.
Of all the new and unique experiences that this once-in-a-lifetime journey offered, the most profound wasn’t the one I expected: an encounter with my father.
Havasu Canyon was formed and is still being transformed by the water that gives life to its inhabitants. Supai is the village seated in a wider section of the canyon nestled just before a series of four spectacular sets of falls that step down the canyon. There are no cars because there is no way to get them there. Mules deliver the mail, and the wealthier tourists can travel by helicopter. But most travel on foot to get there and feet are the only way to go further. Two miles past the village, a simple campground offers accommodation to tourists like us that travel down the singular pedestrian trail that provides access to the canyon. Beyond the campground are Mooney Falls, the tallest and most precarious to get to the bottom of.
Our guides took us to the bottom of these falls on our second day, our only full day in the canyon. It was a treacherous descent, passing twice through pedestrian tunnels chiseled out of the travertine, but mostly exposed to the 200 foot cliff face with minimal placement for hands and feet. The only reason I was able to push myself past my fear of heights was from the implicit peer pressure of the rest of the group mixed with my own stubbornness.
We got to the bottom, hearts pounding but full of joy and relief. There was just a little more canyon to explore before turning around. A few minutes into the rest of the hike, we came upon a smaller slot canyon with just a trickle of water coming out of it, giving life to a cluster of ferns wedged into the sandstone. It is an amazing sight to see ferns growing in this arid climate. Across from this small canyon, on the east side of the larger stream whose banks we were following toward the Colorado, was a sheer, vertical cliff with an arched line of stone framing this viewing spot. As I turned away from the ferns to this stone face to my right, I was immediately overcome with a sense of my father’s presence. It was completely out of the blue and I choked up.
Not knowing what was happening but not wanting to lose the moment, I asked to stay behind for a few minutes while the group went on, promising to catch up (there was no way to get lost anyway). I sat down and wept, not knowing why, not understanding what prompted this outpouring, but having enough sense that my father would have loved this spot and would have loved experiencing it with me.
He had died over twenty years earlier, just a week shy of my twenty-fourth birthday. He had been suffering for over a decade from multiple complications brought on by a long history of alcohol misuse. The rare times from my childhood that I remember seeing him happy were when he was outdoors on an adventure like this, exploring the rarest and most awe-inspiring landscapes. He went to college to be a forest ranger, but dropped out in his senior year to take a desk job offered by his older sister’s husband, a job that he would keep for 34 years, providing him a steady income but slowly killing his spirit and his body in the process.
His wanderlust didn’t die out completely. We traveled cross-country every summer, often visiting different national parks en route. This wanderlust fully implanted in me, despite the ways I distanced myself from him and the pain his addiction brought to my life.
This moment in Havasu reminded me of how very much like him I am. I’ve never liked admitting that, but this hike was early on in my own recovery from the effects of my addictive behaviors and the choice to seek treatment and confront my lack of healthy coping skills, something my father was never able to do. This encounter in the desert, in one of the remotest, hard to get to places, was the last place I could imagine running into my dad as well as the emotional baggage that seemed to fall out of my spiritual backpack at that spot on the trail.
It was an emotional whirlwind, but my resolve was to savor the moment, knowing this might be one of the best encounters with my father that I would ever have, even if it was nothing more than a product of my imagination and the accompanying emotions. It was a peculiar encounter of grace: unearned, undeserved and unexpected.
Now, reflecting back through the lens of 2020, in a year of pandemic when it has been challenging if not impossible to have live, real-bodied encounters with those who are close and important parts of our lives, I am reminded that encounter does not require embodiment, but it does require emotion and emotional vulnerability. Encounter invites us to the edge of a cliff, a spiritual thin place where the turn of the head can yield the unexpected. A spot on the path where a fern can grow and flourish in the most unforgiving terrain.
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