Deep Down the Kaibab Trail
Get full access to Outside Learn, our online education hub featuring in-depth fitness, nutrition, and adventure courses and more than 2,000 instructional videos when you sign up for Outside+ Sign up for Outside+ today.

(a reverse climb)
Deep within the spruce and fir,
I make my camp along the North Rim,
but before I eat my supper, I walk
over to the nighttime edge of the
Grand Canyon to peer three or four
thousand feet down to see a tiny
flickering campfire way below that
will lure me down very early the next
day from a chilly forty degrees into
heat of mid-summer and then some
from Canadian forest to Mexican
desert with shoulder-high prickly pears
and Spanish bayonets, but I return to
find a perch above the cooling spray

of Ribbon Falls where I can drink
my fill and continue to climb back up
into welcoming pearly thunderheads;
however, I lose my energy far too
fast with barely enough tepid water
until a sudden shower of hailstones
coats the ground allowing me to eat
the pellets of ice to moisten my mouth
and spirit until I stand once again on the
rim and stare into all that canyon space.