800 feet under: Carving space for my grandma
“It is a burning, seething cauldron, filled with dramatic light and color.”
— Georgia O’Keeffe, on Palo Duro Canyon
When you begin to watch someone’s health decline, you also begin to contend with their mortality. A certain grieving takes hold as you reckon with the time they have left. But that kind of grief is limited by life itself. It is bound by the opportunity for another day together, another month, another year. Until it isn’t.
I thought grieving my grandma would be easy. I thought I had prepared myself. But the grief trickled in, like a steady but almighty stream — the kind that carves canyons.
I flew to Amarillo, Texas, this past weekend to bury my paternal grandma. She was 93 years old and Amarillo was her home until 2009. (In fact, Amarillo was home to much of my family at some point: I was born there, my parents met there, and even my husband was born in Amarillo and went to high school there.) The town sits atop one of the largest mesas on the North American continent, and, nestled in the flat Western High Planes of the Texas Panhandle, Amarillo gets its name from the surrounding native yellow grasses that cover much of the region.
Drive just 14 miles south of Amarillo, though, and the flat land suddenly drops 800 feet to form the nation’s second largest canyon, Palo Duro Canyon. Driving out to the park is a monotonous experience of flat field, after flat field, after flat field. Maybe you come to an intersection with some action: tumbleweeds rolling across the road. And then more and more flatness. After all, the region is the kind of place where you can look farther and see less than anywhere else on earth. But then you enter the state park grounds, drive up to the first scenic outlook and notice your palms are sweating profusely. Because at first glance, it feels like the earth has opened up into an abyss. It takes your breath away. You question the stability of the outlook itself and the rocks around you. But the canyon draws you in, calling you to descend into another world.
In recent years, I’ve been increasingly interested in situating my identity among the Texas landscape, using the state’s unique geographies as a means for understanding where I come from. And in the days leading up to my grandma’s burial service, I knew I wanted to visit Palo Duro. I had seen the canyon as a child with my grandparents — once to picnic down in the canyon floor and once to see the park’s iconic outdoor musical Texas. And my dad and I drove around the rim at dusk during a brief visit 15 years ago. Suffice to say I hadn’t fully experienced the land as an adult. I felt like I needed to see such an incredible natural landmark from my birthplace, especially considering I might never return.
Get Caleb Fox’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Most of us don’t learn in grade school about the impact canyons have had on our understanding of the earth’s history. We learn about erosion in simple terms. We learn how canyons are formed over thousands upon thousands, if not millions, of years when streams carve away bit by bit. But when canyons expose rock that would otherwise be hidden 800 feet beneath our feet, it becomes possible to understand the kind of life that existed before society; the kind of weather a region experienced; and how those ecological factors changed a place over time. Through a canyon, the earth reveals its own past to us — layers upon layers of stacked history carved out for us to witness.
What’s most striking, though, is how beautiful those layers are — stunning actually. In Palo Duro, the canyon floor begins with a deep wall of burnt orange, Permian-age rock interlaced with shining white veins of gypsum. It’s foundation is followed by a much smoother Tecovas shale in varying gradients of white, gray, lavender and orange rock; and then a much coarser-grained, more weather-resistant Trujillo sandstone before reaching the top most layer that makes up much of the canyon rim.
Hours after my grandma’s service, I decided to make the 45-minute drive from our Airbnb into the heart of the canyon and hike a well-known 3-mile trail, leading to the park’s best-known rock formation: The Lighthouse. Considering my three-day trip was book-ended with long travel days and multiple flights, and considering I had ditched my family and taken my dad’s truck, I decided to turn the hike into a workout. Get in, get out, and somehow be as observant as possible. I power walked across the dusty red dirt, with camera and water bottle in hand, somehow watching everything: the path in front of me for snakes or tarantulas, the native grasses and shrubs blowing in the wind alongside prickly pear cacti, the canyon walls and their bands like layered cake, the clouds above, and most importantly how the light was pouring in.
The sky was partly cloudy that day. Which occasionally offered slight reprieves from the 94º heat. But the moving clouds also offered an opportunity to appreciate an array of color, in front of me and far away. Rock formations and canyon walls moved in and out of the shade at times taking on a moody, dull blue hue and at other times glowing in a radiant beam of warm, late afternoon light. And ultimately the variations in color offered an opportunity to take in the vastness of the canyon.
As the saying goes, “everything is bigger in Texas.” And it’s the wide open spaces that force you to contend with our place in the world. Our smallness in the universe. A chance to see what’s important and what’s trivial.
When I reached the end of the main trail and could see the base of the towering Lighthouse, that smallness seemed amplified. This was partly due to a growing anticipation of the final climb ahead, trying not to spiral toward negative thoughts about not being skilled enough or brave enough to scale the cliffside. And partly because the path had narrowed in, with my bare skin (reader: it became too hot for a shirt) brushing against grasses and shrubs amid every winding turn and step upward. It felt like the path was closing in on me.
Once I arrived at the base, I found a man and a woman sitting on some rocks. I asked them, “Okay, now what?” There was no longer a trail and no longer a clear path. They weren’t sure of their next step either; they had sat down to catch their breath. I shrugged and said “Well, I guess it’s time to explore. I made it this far, so I probably deserve an adventure, right?” I began a steep, rocky climb against the side of the finger-shaped pillar, still with my water bottle and camera in hand like a total amateur. But before I knew it, I was atop a flat, smooth bridge of sandstone connecting the Lighthouse to a neighboring cliff. I felt the sun shifting through the clouds. I felt the wind — the same wind that helped create this tower — graze my skin, whip through my limbs and push my hair. And I wasn’t scared. I was smiling.
The man from below had followed me up the cliffside a few minutes later. When he reached the top he asked if I was from the area. I told him it was complicated, “but yes, my family is from Amarillo,” and I explained my grandma’s funeral earlier that morning. And then I asked him if he’d take a photo of me. “It just feels like a really special moment,” I told him. He obliged.
Leading up to the hike, I couldn’t really explain why I wanted to go so badly. It was like the canyon had been calling me. And even once I was there, I knew it felt right as I trekked the landscape. But in the moment, it just felt like a task to accomplish and appreciate. It wasn’t until the next day — on my travels back home to Chicago, as I sat in the six-gate Amarillo airport for two hours — that it finally clicked. The canyon is literally a means for seeing what came before us.
I needed to see it. I needed to see and feel the grief beginning its steady stream, carving space for my grandma. //
