The End of Night by Bogard Paul

Author:Bogard, Paul [BOGARD, PAUL]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316228794
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2013-07-09T04:00:00+00:00

I have been to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in the past, seen the view, seen the smog, thought, Shoot, this isn’t right, and gone on my way. But I have not been to the North Rim before, and I have not visited this grand old park in search of the night.

I have plans to meet the full moon at its rise, and I will not be late. Coming into the park from the north through the beautiful meadows of the Kaibab Plateau, I pass herds of bison and stands of ponderosa pine, find a campsite, take in the canyon with the late afternoon crowds, enjoy dinner at the lodge before sunset, and saunter the paved path toward an east-facing lookout. I step from the path to climb gnarled beige rocks, and my lookout takes some scrambling to reach, but it’s not that far from the lodge, with its amber-lit windows against the fading blue twilight. The curve of night closes the day sky to a small half-dome in the west, and my fleece jacket feels good. The few lights from the South Rim seem the same size as stars, though they are pink from high-pressure sodium. They and a jet’s blink and contrail are the only signs of the human.

The moon first appears as a fire-orange flare behind the flat horizon mesa, then, like a red-pink ball burning toward me, devouring forest and moving west. Technically, we are revolving toward night at something close to 1,000 mph, but we never notice that. What we notice, if we notice, is the speed at which the moon rises: slow enough to make you impatient if you’re still on human time, but still fast enough you can see it happening. With the entire glowing ball well above the horizon, lighting these gnarled rocks beige-white, the moon seems smaller here than elsewhere, and the sky enormous. Then, I know why: I can see almost entirely around me, only back toward the lodge do rocks and pines disrupt the 360-degree flat horizon. Otherwise, my perch is a ship’s tower in the middle of the sea, smooth horizon all around, and above, a full bowl of stars. The view is vertigo-inducing and makes me wobble-kneed, swervy. I lie back on the rocks, rocks that in daylight appear full of ocean creature fossils, lie on an ocean floor looking up at the night sky.

During the day, there were obese Americans complaining about having to walk a hundred feet, a young French couple with their toddler in a backpack, a British girl clutching a golden teddy bear and telling it to not look down. But at night, now, almost no one—only two couples—shares my view of this grand moon rising over the full canyon, and I know of their presence only by their camera’s occasional click and flash. At night now in natural light the layers of rock are clearer, the sense of eternal time greater—the ancient moon on the ancient stone, and all of us just passing through.

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