![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.arialasvegas.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/380x270\/public\/grand%20canyon%20south%20380.jpg\")
<\/p>\n6-27-13
\nThe prompt:
\nMake a short list of words that describe largeness: grand huge vast biggest humongous
\nList of words that describe smallness:\u00a0 tiny\u00a0 itsy little\u00a0 slight\u00a0 minute
\nRandomly pair the lists:\u00a0 tiny-grand\u00a0 huge-slight<\/p>\n
What would you write?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Grand Canyon spread out before me, and I just stood staring out at the vastness.\u00a0 Layer upon layer of sandstone painted the vista with vivid reds, oranges and yellows.\u00a0 I wanted so to take in the wholeness of it, but felt inadequate before the space.<\/p>\n
The others had all opted for the guided burro rides down the canyon face to the river below.\u00a0 I for some reason decided to stay and play the solitary wanderer.\u00a0 I looked over at the trail crawling down the side.\u00a0 The riders had disappeared around a corner already.\u00a0 I walked back to the car, reached in for a couple of bottles of water and my pack, and moved over to the opposite side of the parking lot.\u00a0 I stepped over the chain that blocked another, narrower path and headed down alone.\u00a0 The air was dry and cool, and it looked like I was going to have a nice solitary hike.\u00a0 I kept the canyon wall to my right, and kept my head down to keep the light of the bright sun out of my eyes.\u00a0 The view might have been insanely scenic, but I saw only dry trail and the thin Colorado River below.<\/p>\n
Fifteen minutes into my jaunt, the trail seemed to get a bit narrower.\u00a0 I noticed that my right shoulder was getting a bit dusty from rubbing up against the wall of rock.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t realize till then that the trail just kept on going into the distance, but with the odd narrow spot here and there, as though a rock fall from above had taken out a bit of the path and left a one-person-wide cornice over the canyon below.\u00a0 I slowed and examined the path as far ahead as I could see, and it still looked passable, though narrow.\u00a0 I looked back then, and saw that with my focus on the path, I had walked through three of the narrows already.\u00a0 Rather than let the deteriorating trail turn me back, I decided to be the adventurous type and forge on.\u00a0 I had gotten this far. \u00a0how bad could it be?<\/p>\n
I walked on, drinking sporadically and stopping to view the canyon.\u00a0 Leaning back against the red rock wall, I looked out at millions of years of geologic history off in the distance.\u00a0 The striations on the rock walls reminded me that the sediment was laid along a vast shore over thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years.\u00a0 In my speck of a trail, I felt like an ant under a microscope with the Grand Canyon looming over me, wondering at my minuteness.<\/p>\n
It felt like forever, but was actually only ninety minutes when I came around a small outcrop on the trail and encountered a full stop.\u00a0 There before me was sheer cliff face.\u00a0 The trail had been wiped clean, and there was no more forward in my day.\u00a0 A rock slide had taken out fifty feet of cliff face, and I could see the bare virgin rock untouched by the weather.<\/p>\n
I rested for a while, and took in the whole scenic immenseness that was the Grand Canyon.\u00a0 With a sigh and gratitude at having seen the scar on the cliff face, I turned back to trek up the canyon wall again to rejoin the group.\u00a0 I figured that I would be back before they knew I was gone.<\/p>\n
At the first narrowing of the trail, knowing that I had come through on the way down, I passed right along the path, left shoulder hugging rock.\u00a0 The pebbles falling away into the void didn\u2019t scare me.\u00a0 At the second narrows, I hesitated, rested a b it, and finished off the second bottle of water.\u00a0 I will admit to a bit of fear, but I walked slowly along the trail, my back to the rocks and my whole self presented to the canyon.\u00a0 When I got back to the wider part of the trail, I looked behind me and wondered how I ever made it through there on the way down.\u00a0 I must have been so focused on keeping the sun out of my eyes that it never occurred to me to turn back to safety.<\/p>\n
I plugged on, heading steadily up toward the rim.\u00a0 The sun had shifted across the canyon walls, and I felt bathed in red-orange light.\u00a0 I came up to the last narrow spot, and froze.\u00a0 There was no way that I had come through there.\u00a0 I would have had to jump over one gap, and the trail on either side of it was eighteen inches wide at most.\u00a0 What had I done?\u00a0 A sheen of sweat broke out all over my body, chilling me in the shadows of the canyon wall.\u00a0 I had no choice.<\/p>\n
I began by moving up to the edge of the slight lip, and swung the pack off my back.\u00a0 With a long backhand, I tossed it forward, out and away, and saw it fall onto the narrow trail eight feet in front of me.\u00a0 With my hand on the rocks, I backed up ten paces, took a few deep breaths, and jogged forward, my eyes focused on the backpack.\u00a0 At the edge of the gap,\u00a0 I pushed off, seeing only the pack, and thudded into the trail.\u00a0 I skidded a bit, and my right foot was off the rock and into air, but I rolled left and hit the wall.\u00a0 I was safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
6-27-13 The prompt: Make a short list of words that describe largeness: grand huge vast biggest humongous List of words that describe smallness:\u00a0 tiny\u00a0 itsy little\u00a0 slight\u00a0 minute Randomly pair the lists:\u00a0 tiny-grand\u00a0 huge-slight What would you write? \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Grand Canyon spread out before me, and I just stood staring out at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-promptedwriting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mainlyprompts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}