Lessons From Mom’s Grand Canyon Trip.

Ho-kay.  Are you back with me?  In 1948 my mom was 28 years old and working for the US Department of the Treasury in Washington D. C.  She still had three years go to of single life.  She and her fellow government employees had five weeks of vacation a year, and one of them, Cora, was a very adventurous spirit.  (I’m thinking she’s the one right above my mom, but I’m not sure.)  Anyway, the six of them decided to go on a huge driving trip all over the US in Cora’s car.  I find myself totally boggled by some aspects of this story.  How big was the car?  Where on earth did they put everyone’s luggage?  Did they have a roof rack?  And, most puzzling to me,  how could they possibly be sure that they’d find gas stations?  Remember, the interstate highway system was built, or at least begun, during the Eisenhower administration.  At this point Truman was President; Eisenhower wouldn’t even be elected for his first term until 1952.  So there were certainly roads, but none of these 24-hour plazas.  I wish I’d thought to ask my mom these pressing questions; her answer, I feel pretty safe in saying, would probably have been, “Oh, Cora took care of all that.”

Anyway, they got to the Grand Canyon, and the plan was to take the mule ride down to the bottom.  (Those look like horses to me, but the equine experts in this house have assured me that they’re indeed mules.)  My mom had no intention of going on such an expedition, and she assumed that the other timid soul on the trip (whose name I can’t remember) would also be a no-show, so they’d do something else during the day.  But no.  Ms. Normally-Timid-Soul said, “Well, of course I’m going on the mule ride!”  So, unless my mom wanted to spend the day by herself, she had to go, too.  You can see that they’re on a trail with a pretty steep dropoff; periodically the mules would spot tasty tufts of grass down on the slope that would require them to l-e-a-n d-o-w-n to get a bite.  My mom would sit there screaming.  The guide would assure her, “Ma’am, you couldn’t push that mule off the track!”  She was not calmed down by this information; after all, what she was really concerned about wasn’t that the mule would go down but that she would–right over the mule’s head.  It seems pretty clear in the picture that the saddles have horns, so it would have been pretty hard for her to go over.  No matter.  Her main memory of that day is of sheer terror.

While we were on our own trip I realized that, while I certainly wasn’t screaming or terrorized, I was clutching the saddlehorn so tightly that I’d gotten myself a blister on both hands, and I thought of my mom.  ‘Relax,’ I told myself.  ‘The horse is doing all the work.  You’re not keeping him on the trail.  Just sit there and enjoy yourself.’  Once I came to that realization I did enjoy the ride more.  Good ol’ Gunther knew what he was doing!  But we do this type of thing all the time, don’t we?  People who are afraid of flying will sit clutching the armrests during takeoff or landing, or they’ll lean forward as if to help keep the plane in the air.  Back-seat or passenger-side drivers will jam on an imaginary brake if they think the real driver needs to slow down.  (Not that I’ve ever done that, mind you!)  We drive ourselves and everyone around us crazy.  (I’m sure that poor guide gave himself a hefty slug of nerve-calming whiskey at the end of that particular day.)

Oh, and by the way–if you should ever want to book one of these trips yourself, be advised that you have to book months in advance, and they’re very expensive.  So I’ve not managed to take this trip myself, even though I’ve visited the Grand Canyon at least twice.  (One time was with my parents, and, sure enough, my mom just about had a conniption because she was afraid I’d fall over the edge of the canyon while stepping back to take a picture.  Sigh.  We did have a good time, but I do wish at some point in her life she had learned to chill out a little.)

So, I guess is moral here is to save your energy for what actually counts and the rest of the time to leave things up to the people who are actually in charge.  Might save us all a few blisters and frazzled nerves, no?