Some years ago, I did a rim-to-rim crossing of the Grand Canyon over four days. I had never seen the Grand Canyon before; this was a bucket-list trip for my cousin, and I gamely agreed to go along.
We started from the far more remote North Rim of the canyon. We didn't stay there overnight — real beds are for the weak on this sort of trip — but here's my journal entry from that visit:
North Rim Lodge has a deck looking out over the canyon where I want to sit and look out forever. Unreal. I saw the light on the South Rim and can't conceptualize at all how I'll get from here to there.
What I call the North Rim Lodge is the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, perched above the canyon's less-accessible North Rim. I spent one afternoon there before my Big Ditch crossing and I couldn't get it out of my mind. So I went back in 2019 and spent every night sitting on that deck just staring into the blackest sky I've ever seen, punctuated by the brightest stars you can imagine.
That stone deck became in that first moment my favorite place in the world — the place I go to in my mind when I need a real or mental rest and reminder of just how gloriously insignificant I am amid the beauty of the land and sky. It became my answer to the "what's your favorite hotel?" question people love to ask.
I can't contain into words the feeling of that place, to me.
And now it's gone. A lightning strike sparked a wildfire on July 4, leading to the Dragon Bravo Fire, which currently remains uncontained.
The good news is that the people in the area were all evacuated and safe. The lodge, many cabins and other buildings on the rim are gone though.
And it's not the first time! The original lodge, built in 1927, was destroyed by a kitchen fire in 1932 and rebuilt on its original footprint in 1937.
Rebuilding something like this now will be tricky, though. The lodge is owned by the National Park Service and run through a concessionaire — in this case, Aramark.
Yes, the desire to rebuild will be strong once the fire is fully contained and recovered, but that might not be so easy, particularly given current budget and staffing cuts that will hurt the park service for years to come.
Does that make me sad? Sure. But I can guarantee you that every person who has been lucky enough to visit that magical lodge knows that it really never was about the structure. It was about the stars.
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