What Makes Grand Canyon Special

For many, the Grand Canyon is the pinnacle of natural beauty. It hides nothing, standing before the viewer in its humble magnificence. Each viewing brings a different experience, each play of shadow by passing cloud a different lighting. It is a masterpiece, some 17 million years in the making, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, up with the likes of Mount Everest and the Great Barrier Reef. It is one of the most recognized and most visited natural landscapes in the world. 

What makes the Grand Canyon special is its non-boastful presence. It overwhelms the viewer but does not try. It amazes the eye and even soothes the soul simply by gazing at it, yet it has no mandate or imposition in approach. Each viewer can take in the Grand Canyon on his or her own terms, meet it wherever they are in their own life, and the view takes in all that baggage, weariness, and imposition and returns a warm sense of life. Considered a holy land by the original inhabitants of the area and a solemn bringer of peace by most that gaze upon it, the Grand Canyon simply is. It is one of the few places that don’t create an expectation to travel within it; one can gain much by simply viewing it, by scanning the horizon, peering down its canyon walls, watching the tiny thread of the Colorado and wonder as to how that little ribbon of water created all this. The Grand Canyon creates a sense of awe, an assertion of the divine, a wellness of being simply in gazing upon it. Whether during the heat of summer or the snowy accent of winter, whether from the light of sunset or the spot lit rays of sunshine pouring through the thunder clouds of a mid-day storm, each view gives comfort. 

Think of the times in your life when you felt special. Those singular moments when everything went just so, that you risked the impossible and it actually worked in your favor. When you decided to do something not for yourself, but for someone else. You did that something even when it meant that only you would know of the benefit provided, an unconditional presence of selflessness. This is the Grand Canyon, providing inspiration and warm takeaways for 5 million visitors every year, giving of itself, inducing respectful wonder simply by its own manifestation. What makes the Grand Canyon special is that it gives; it gives openly, generously and without asking anything at all in return. You leave a better person having simply looked at it. There are few places in this world that can make this claim.