“you know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away.”
Paul Simon was slip sliding away in my head as I made my way down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Shorts, T-shirt, hiking boots, sunglasses, hat, suntan lotion… backpack with water, trail mix, snack bars. The group of four of us were like a yo-yo or a slinky as we trekked down the cliff—the distance between us getting longer and shorter as we each found our own staccato rhythm and pace.
I danced on the red rocks… the soles of my hiking boots absorbing the impact of stones jutting up on the trail. These were my first pair of real hiking boots.
“Slip sliding away,” I sang to myself… the rhythm making me smile. With each switchback, I watched the Colorado river slowly come into view and get larger in the distance. Sometimes I even sang aloud when I was “All by myself.” I tried other songs, but I always came back to Paul Simon…
Slip sliding away… I know a man, he came from my hometown He wore his passion for his woman like a thorny crown He said Dolores, I live in fear My love for you's so overpowering, I'm afraid that I will disappear
Up ahead, I saw that my friend, Paul, had stopped. He was in the lead with longer legs and much longer stride. We waited for the other two to catch up.
“What’s this building?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
It was a wooden structure that seemed to be on stilts. The narrow switchback trail down the red rocks had opened up onto a large flat ledge.
“I have to use the bathroom,” said Karen as she walked up to us with Scott. They were a couple and walking together. Karen was the only girl in the group, but she was also the only one of us that had any real experience camping. She walked off to find a spot.
We all thought this might be a good place to rest for a minute. There was shade from the building. The sun was hot, and the air was dry. The red dust stained my socks, and later I would find out, even stained my underwear. This was a whole different landscape from the beaches of Florida where I grew up or the forests of Michigan where I was in medical school.
We were surrounded by the beautiful red rocks of the Grand Canyon, something that I had only read about in books… and I was here hiking down into the belly of this natural wonder.
Slip sliding away. I know a woman, (who) became a wife These are the very words she uses to describe her life She said a good day ain't got no rain She said a bad day is when I lie in the bed And I think of things that might have been
We took out our water bottles and trail mix, and then we spread out to explore the area.
My friend, Karen, comes back after a few minutes, proudly holding up her plastic zip lock bag with a shovel and tissues.
“Pack in and pack out,” she says grinning.
I marvel at her camping skills. She is a small Asian woman, but she was the one that would be able to survive out here.
Slip sliding away... And I know a father who had a son He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he'd done He came a long way just to explain He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping Then he turned around and he headed home again
Scott climbed up the steps to the wooden building.
I thought to myself: It’s just a square plain box of a building — wooden, rustic, raised up six feet on stilts. Why was it here? Looks like some official structure that we should not bother. Storage probably.
Scott looks down at us from the railing of a small deck with a big smile—beaming.
“Hey guys,” he says, “it’s a bathroom.”
Slip sliding away... God makes his plan The information's unavailable to the mortal man We're workin' our jobs, collect our pay Believe we're gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip sliding away