Grand Canyon Trip

Breanna Elise Jones
Dr. Cotton
Advanced Expository Writing
ENGL 3433 01
Final Draft

“All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing praise to your name.”
This verse from Psalm 66:4 can be found inscribed on a plaque located at the top of the Desert View Watchtower in the Grand Canyon. These words testify to the awe-inspiring creativity of a
God who is able to create something so vast as the Grand Canyon. They’re also reminiscent of how I felt while touring the area in May 2011.
It is big. It is wide. It is too overwhelming for words. I am standing at the edge of a precipice, just two or three feet from a railing, wearing a jacket with my billed hat because, despite the sun, it’s surprisingly cold here in Arizona. It’s about 50 degrees and the wind is blowing rather hard. But these things do not matter. All that matters is what is before me. “On the way here,” I tell Mom, “I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. But now, seeing it…”   “I know,” Mom says. I feel overwhelmed. I can sense God’s bigness in this place and his inestimable glory. I can sense his presence with me now even as I stand here.
But I can sense something else as well; I can sense the thousands of years of history that this place must have seen. The Grand Canyon National Park site explains that Teddy Roosevelt came here in the early 1900s and dedicated the canyon as a national park. According to another site, Arizona’s Women’s Heritage Trail, young women known as Harvey Girls have been working in the hotels located near the canyon since its early history. The National Geographic website says that a married couple named Glen and Bessie Hyde disappeared while rafting through the canyon in 1928.   These people, along with millions of others, have set foot onto the Grand Canyon long before I ever arrived. The thought boggles my mind to this day.

I observe several people step down from the canyon rim to the rocky outcroppings below. I wish I had the...