Above it all

The thrill of taking off in a helicopter never truly goes away. As the rotors begin to spin, and your seat shudders with the movement, you feel like a Bond villain escaping the scene of a heinous crime, or a plucky journalist about to land in a war zone.

This time, I am lucky enough to be in the front seat, with a glass floor beneath my feet and the entire cockpit windscreen before me. I note with amusement that even in an aircraft, the Americans still use left-hand drive.

We chat to the pilot as he expertly manoeuvres us off the field. Before we’ve even reached the rim of the Grand Canyon he knows all of our life stories and what brought us to the U.S.

He tells us to look out for deer in the forest below. From our position it looks like a model landscape a toymaker has designed to show children how a train set works. The pines are a dark, plastic green, huddled together like a group of exceptionally cold penguins, separated only by sparse patches of gravelly scrub. I keep my eyes peeled for a flash of brown, but as we get higher it’s increasingly difficult to make out the details. When the ground gets too hard to see I shift my gaze to the horizon, studying a range of mountains that mark the boundary between land and sky; and I wait for the big reveal.

The big reveal, as it was advertised to us, is the exact moment above the canyon when the ground drops away, and there is nothing left but you and the air and an immense feeling of awe.

Someone tells me to look up and I am photographed suddenly, mouth still moving as I point out a peak that looks exactly like the Lonely Mountain from The Hobbit. I hate it when they show it to me later, but in the moment I don’t care.

We bank to the left, and a canyon wall comes into view for the first time. My heart rate rises.

The pilot asks us if we’re ready, and, like a good tourist, I press record. A little prematurely, resulting in a lopsided minute-and- a-half of tree footage. Don’t worry, I think. You can sort it out later. Somewhat of a mantra for me.

We can see the canyon edge now. The anticipation is cruel, time slowing down to a crawl. Nobody says anything, but hands are clutched tightly. All we can do is process the thunderous sound of the propellers.

I imagine numbers counting backwards to zero on a mileage clock as we cover the distance, rapid but somehow slow. When we finally cross the edge there is an outbreak of shrieking. It is a cry of elation.

The canyon, like the first time we saw it yesterday afternoon, is breath-taking. It’s difficult to describe its vastness to someone who has not been there. The closest possible description is simply that it goes on forever, in every direction.  In fact, it is so immense, that once we are over the boundary we hardly seem to move at all. The landscape never changes, no matter how far or fast we fly.

For the first few minutes there is nothing but blasphemy. I find I can’t help myself; after three months of waiting, I’m finally here.

A lot of thoughts come upon me at once. The first is that it looks like some kind of Mars-scape, all red rock and sand; the second is that it is nothing like the photos; the third is that it’s slightly worrying that I have an urge to jump straight into the middle of it.

Euphoria swells in my chest. This is living.

Once we have all calmed down to a level the pilot deems acceptable, he begins to tell us about the history of this great wonder. A gorge of some six million years, a mile deep and ten times as wide.

Do you guys know what made this?

The pilot’s voice crackles through our headsets.

A really big spade? I am tempted to answer.

The river, he says.

I look down and wonder how a single path of water has carved out such a monument. From this distance it is a thin ribbon of blue, dulled by the overcast sky.

Years and years of erosion, straight through from Colorado. Some of the oldest rock in the world is at the bottom of that.

I view the finer details through my camera lens, taking advantage of its superzoom. It shows me the piles of sediment that have built up over the canyon’s life, multi-coloured lines that look like those bottles of rainbow sand you can bring back from seaside resorts.

The pilot points out a plateau ahead. It ends in a strange cliff, like someone has chiselled a crack into the earth and then torn it clean apart. Its edge is slightly serrated, and you can see where it would connect with the opposite side of the canyon like a jigsaw puzzle. The enormous, flat plain behind it almost gives it the appearance of a stage. It would be quite easy to run straight off the edge if you didn’t know it was there.

That’s Native American land, he says.

Unfortunately they don’t own as much as they used to.

Further along we fly over another forest. It makes a change from the maze of rock below, where stone corridors diverge from the central crater into cliffs, dead-ends and even more labyrinths.

Here the land is scorched in parts. The pilot doesn’t need to tell us what happened; the aftermath of a fire is always unmistakeable.

Some controlled burns, some accidental, some idiots, he says.

Though the hills still retain a vague shade of green, the surface is almost completely bare. The few trees that populate the area are thin, sickly- looking things, with blackened trunks and scant leaves. Around their bases are tufts of white grass, like nose hairs.

A road divides the sparsity, but there’s not a car in sight, nor any deer.

I realise too late that the return to forest means that we have to say goodbye to the canyon. The pilot says we’ve been out for almost an hour, but it feels as though no time has passed at all. Luckily we’re coming back tomorrow, on foot.

The colour palette shifts again to a healthier, deeper green as we get closer to the Heliport. The sun emerges from the clouds and illuminates the cliffs to our left. The shadows only serve to make the lit sections of the canyon more dazzling, highlighting their ruddiness. It’s surreal to look at.

By the time we land the afternoon is drawing in. The sun is still out, pathetic fallacy at its best. None of us want to leave the helicopter. We ask the pilot if he’ll take us again, sneak off while nobody’s watching. He smiles, and says the best he can do is a photo.

I can feel the dust, deep-set and grainy, disappearing further into the recesses of the crinkles around my eyes as he takes the picture. I’ve ticked something off my bucket list, finally, and my gleeful face is showing it. It’s probably quite annoying.

We invite the pilot into frame. It only seems right; he’s just spent an hour of his life giving us one of the best experiences in the world. I ask him how many miles we flew.

Oh, I’d say about 25, maybe 30?

30?!

Don’t forget, it’s a big place.

Huge, I agree.

We disperse. He shakes everyone’s hand before he walks away, and the last we see of him are his shoulder marks, gold wings glinting in the sun as he disappears into the building.

As we sit in the lounge, waiting for the other helicopter to return, I browse through my photos. Not a single one is straight, but at least they’re all in focus. I hope to God that I don’t lose my camera.

All that’s left to remember today are these photographs and my memory. Fragile things.

I go all the way back to the beginning of the summer and follow the photos through in chronological order. Pennsylvania, where my adventures began; Spruce Lake Camp, my home for 13 weeks; the trip to Niagara Falls with my parents; New York. I find a sepia photo of my Converse, which now reside in a bin somewhere on the East coast. Looking down at the new ones on my feet, I wish them luck through the many miles they have yet to tread.