Chapter 3

When you come upon the Chapel of the Holy Cross, you have a surreal expectation of the hand of God just picking this structure up from somewhere else and depositing it on these two large, red rock formations.

“Yer’ gonna’ catch flies, son,” observed Rich, my jaw dropping at the sheer spectacle before me.

We spent about an hour there, learning the history of the Chapel, and I was blown away by the cross itself. It’s an integral part of the structure of the building, and it honestly looked like it had been wedged in between these massive rock formations.

We went outside and Rich got sidetracked talking to a couple of young nuns, so I meandered away a bit, looking to get some of the local flavor by taking in the incredible landscape.

As I walked down this path and turned left around an outcropping, I came upon a young girl, well, mid-teens I guess. She was dressed in some casual clothes, and she also had a horse with her.

“Hello,” I said, trying to look friendly and hoping I wasn’t gonna’ scare her away.

“Hey,” was the reply. She seemed a bit distracted.

“You ok?” I asked.

She got up on the horse and then looked back at me.

“I’m fine, mister. Just gonna’ go take a ride into the desert. Me and Gee.”

“Gee?” I wondered if she had named her horse after the song Me and Bobby McGee. I asked her.

She looked back over her shoulder one last time before moving out of view.

“Geen Naam. That’s his name. Look it up, mister.” She laughed at an obvious private joke, and then she was gone.

When I got back, Rich was wrapping up his conversation about flying with the nuns and we were ready to move on.

Back in the Hummer, heading north, I told him of my encounter with the girl.

“Hitting on a 15-year-old, huh?” He was back to poking fun at me.

“Well, you were no better, trying to hook us up with a couple of nuns!”

He roared. “Touché!”

A few minutes later he was texting a close friend of his and asked for that name again, and I repeated what the girl had said.

“Geen Nam? Sounds foreign.”

A minute or so later he snorted. “She said that we’re both idiots, that it means ‘no name’.” We both looked at each other and said “Horse!” at the same time, then agreed that when we got back we’d tell Horse that he had a story to write about that girl and HER horse with no name.

I got the joke now, why the girl laughed when I’d inquired about her horse’s name ... no name. Kids, sheesh.

The rest of the ride to the Canyon, and, you called it “the Canyon” if you wanted to sound local and not use the touristy “GRAND CANYON!”, was without incident.

The most amazing thing about the Canyon was its sheer size. If you ask, most people can roughly guess that it’s about four to five miles wide, actually up to 18 at its widest point. But most don’t have a clue that it’s over 200 miles long!

When arriving at the Grand Canyon Visitor Center, you can’t help but get a feeling of great expectation, of something that’s far, far bigger than yourself. Rich and I made our way toward Mather Point, a popular choice for visitors of the South Rim.

As we walked, I noticed Rich slowing down a bit as we got closer. From our vantage point, you could see across the Canyon toward the North Rim, but you couldn’t yet see down into it very well.

Then I remembered the phobia.

“You okay?” I asked, in sotto voce, so as not to alert other visitors and potentially embarrass him.

He nodded slightly, and replied, “You go on, I’ll catch up.”

I nodded and continued my trek toward the vista point. There were others there, but it was by no means crowded. Some people had binoculars; I was initially content to take in the wide-angle view. If I believed in God, I could see where I’d think this was one place on Earth where he dug a bit.

Popping a few quarters into one of the Visitor Center’s binocular-like viewing ports, I was able to look deeply into the Canyon, down to where the Colorado was snaking its way through. Although I mostly ignored the conversations around me, when a young boy asked his Mom a question, I instantly became alert.

“Mommy? Why is that older man standing over there?”