In 1972 I was 8 years old...

My family and I were driving from Oklahoma to California. We were on vacation so we didn’t drive straight through, we took the long way as my Dad would call it, so we strayed from beaten path at times. Somewhere along the way in Arizona we stopped on the side of the road to rest and to stretch our legs a bit. We never had much money so when I say we stopped on the side of the road, that's pretty much what we did. I know my Mom told me not to wander off so of course that's the first thing I did. I remember crawling through a fence and walking through the trees and bushes a ways and coming to an enormous canyon, bigger than anything I ever had imagined. I was on the side of it I thought because I was looking across it rather than looking at it from one end or the other. I remember looking down at the fog rising up and I always thought that I was above the clouds. It was a straight drop off and a little scary but I walked to the edge and looked down. Below me and to the sides it was dark because of the shadows created by the depth of the walls. I remember feeling a little unbalanced. I ran back to where my family was and I never told anyone because at the time I thought I would be in trouble. It was probably the farthest in any direction I’d ever seen. You could not see it from the highway as we drove off, I know because that’s all I looked for the rest of the trip. It almost haunted me, I sat quietly and thought about it for quite a ways. There was plenty of mountains and canyons along the way but nothing like that. There were some places where it seemed that the drop off came right up to the side of the highway. I really liked Arizona and New Mexico, I was 10 the last time I was there. I’ve always wondered if it looked, felt, and even smelled the same. I hope my child gets to visit there someday, I would recommend seeing the Grand Canyon, I would imagine it’s worth the time.