At the bottom of the Grand Canyon there was a helicopter launch pad, a vacant house and a lonely basketball goal. These were objective objects of a still life. To whom they belonged didn’t matter. These misfits were art factual, insightful and somewhat turned upside down by their strange appearance here. Like a purgatory for domestic disturbances- caught between a picket fence-contained life and the junkyard. Two hours ago we had begun our slow descent down the steepest staircase into one of the most elegant and exquisite archives of the Earth’s life and times. Flora and fauna long extinct envelop the walls; the very dust in the air is primordial. When you enter this place there is a sense of wonder and amazement. You have expectations for it- to surpass, to conquer, to inspire, to discover. Though the very reason for its existence is not to evoke a response from you. Here tacit eternal constants such as time and space reign supreme. It is this realization that abandons you to silent wonder. Light plays an interesting role in this place. Its source becomes your source for blisters, complaint, and exhaustion. But it also illuminates the otherwise cool mauves and violets, orchestrating a well-rehearsed tonal palette of rust reds and oranges that warm up for sunrise in a spectacular and bright ballet. It is the animator of everything. To think this all cycles back to its stellar inception as a nebulous ball of dust and gas! The debut is over sooner than it begins and by noon a new act de force takes over; nothing is exempt. The pervasiveness of the sun is a harsh reminder of the quickly forgotten truth that so many hikers and explorers shun- this place is feral and unfriendly. We are merely the guests of an opulent and inhospitable host. The house rules here were written before our time. Your predecessors- human and nonhuman- leave artifacts of their journey along the way. Sometimes you can place your very foot in their boot-tracks. Or examine the scalar detail of a snakeskin crumpled like the topographic forms that surround you. Flashfloods and stagnant air provide favorable conditions for momentary fossilization. These minute visual detours are mind-consuming and self-directed; derivatives of inward reflection and outward scope. Without conscious effort something is engendering change in subtle pathways both physical and metaphysical. The scenery is also changing. Your global viewpoint is being dwarfed and narrowed; this inversion of perspective- looking down on something versus looking up at something else- marks your progression in altitude. All around you there are bio-spheric changes that serve as a referential. Lush shifts to spare and prosperity to minimalism in the form of balsam fir and moss to Spanish bayonets and sagebrush. All of this says nothing for what incredible after images the sun burns into your memory of the place. I can transport myself there even now. I envision luminous striations of ferric rich burgundy and there is so much iron the air smells like a forge. It is in places such as these where boundaries and expectations are re-shaped and formed into an alloy of ideas that we access moments of transcendence. They are glimpses into a higher state invisible to the singular eye.