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by Laura Moretti
I saw God today. And not being a believer in any traditional God, that says a lot.
But I did see God today.
I had joined
a colleague on long, seemingly endless and barren desert highways in Arizona.
We were on a mission — to save the life of a lone doomed mule who
was currently working for the government as a pack animal in a national
park outside Tucson.
Merle Haggard
played on the radio. Marlboro cigarette smoke filled the cab. And cactus,
tumbleweeds and sage grass could be seen as far as one could see.
But like
all missions, we were sidetracked — in this case, by the romantic
idea of visiting one of the seven wonders of the natural world: the Grand
Canyon.
The sun was
nearly gone that late afternoon; we were tired, exhausted, and the drive
had been so monotonous and long, we joked about it being just our luck
to arrive at the canyon in pitch blackness.
I mocked
our soon-to-come conversation. “We’ll be standing on the edge
— seeing absolutely nothing because nighttime — that stark devouring
black — will have swallowed the canyon, and I’ll say, ‘Do
you suppose they’re right, I mean, about it being huge and all?’”
My companion
was too tired from hours and hours of driving, pulling a stock trailer
at a required reduced speed, to find my comment anything but amusing.
Besides, he had grown reluctantly fond of my sarcasm. It broke the boredom.
“Calm yourself,” he said.
Twenty dollars
got us into the park just before the sun disappeared. In a bend in the
nearly deserted roadway, I caught a glimpse of the canyon’s rim through
the trees. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was seeing the
far side of the chasm, some eight miles away — and just the tip top
of it. Maybe it was a sixth sense I had of its impending affect on my
life. Maybe it was just the fact that I was that close to something as
grand as I had imagined it was. Or maybe it was simply God. Real God.
The kind Dante wrote about: “Nature is the art of God.” Or Millay:
“God, I can push the grass apart / and lay my finger on thy heart!”
No. More like Nietzsche: “Nature is God.”
It must have
been, don’t you see? Because, even before I laid eyes on its colossal
void, I had been taken by the Grand Canyon — my soul, I mean. I was
already moved to tears as I scrambled out of the truck and headed for
the rim, but I was not prepared for what I was about to see.
The Canyon
opened unexpectedly before me, as if a gigantic quake had blown past the
Richter scale and ripped the earth apart — as if it had emptied the
oceans right there beneath me. I was emotionally stunned. And speechless.
I was minimized.
The Grand
Canyon is a gargantuan abyss. More than one mile deep, 277 miles long
and up to 18 miles wide. There is absolutely nothing else on earth like
it.
It is not
something that can be seen in photographs or on videotape. It is something
that can only be felt by standing on its rim overlooking its sheer cliffs
of multi-colored rock that have formed over millions and millions of years.
It is something that can only be understood in its almighty presence.
The Grand
Canyon is a teacher. It reminds us that we are alone on this planet —
and that we are not. It strips us of our importance — and yet begs
us for stewardship. It opens the soul. And the mind. And, in so doing,
it undermines our arrogance. “I have survived without you. I shall
survive without you.”
“Humbling,”
my friend whispered as he stood beside me in the setting sun, on the edge
of a four-million-year-old cliff, hearing the voice I had just heard come
up from the grandest of the grand. The voice of God.
Is this work
for naught? She’ll go on without us, this earth. The dinosaurs faded
away. So will we — at this rate, the rate we’re killing ourselves
and each other. But she’ll survive. Some other fantastic creature
will emerge from the rubble. Maybe one smart enough to last longer. But
we are mere nothings in the grand scheme of things.
We nicknamed
the mule “Mo” after me — but not before the animal dragged
my partner several times into the desert while we tried to load him in
the trailer. Mo couldn’t know he was on his way to slaughter had
we not arrived on the scene. Mo couldn’t know he was now on his way
to horse heaven where he would live out the remainder of his life among
his own, without human interference. In the end, intelligence over muscle
won the day and Mo was loaded.
Merle Haggard
and Marlboro cigarettes. And vast open prairies of desert cactus. One
life saved, pulled back from the edge. And for what, I could only wonder?
We stopped
in the middle of the night to fill a bucket with water for the mule. I
offered him apple pie through the trailer slats, but he didn’t bite.
He seemed timid. Restless. Tired of us humans. I climbed on the side of
the trailer and peered at him through a higher slot. He lifted his head
and met my gaze. “Calm yourself,” I whispered. “You are
going home.”
I can’t
assimilate the whys. I don’t know why I’m compelled to save
one life, to pull one lone living being back from the edge, to do what
I feel I must do, that I have no choice in doing.
No, no, wait
a minute. I do know why. Of course! Why hadn’t it been clear before?
The Hebrew proverb: “He who saves one life, saves the world entire.”
We are all connected. I understood that again when the light shone in
the mule’s eyes — and in them I could see the depths of the
Grand Canyon.
I could see God.
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