Here’s a view from the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. I don’t remember quite where. The canyon is probably twelve or fifteen miles broad at this point, and what you see of the geology is complex.
I’d been to the North Rim in 2008, but I’d last been on the South Rim in 1977, when I was with a group of Albuquerque fans that motored to the park in order to attend Leprecon, a science fiction convention. Four of us drove out in my horrible 1972 Chevy window van. Because the van only had two seats, I’d put a couple lawn chairs in the back for the convenience of my passengers. In the event of a crash they would have turned into projectiles, but I managed to keep the van on the road, and nothing fell off the machine that I couldn’t reattach.
It was winter and there was still snow on the ground. A lot of wildlife hung around the hotel: I saw deer and skunks, and i found footprints of some kind of wild cat.
We were poor and slept four to a double-bed room at the hotel. One bed was taken by a couple who were in the process of getting divorced, but were still friendly enough to travel together. I shared the other bed with Bob Vardeman, with unanticipated comic results. I tend to like to burrow deep into the bed, and hang my feet off the bottom of the mattress. Bob likes to cram himself up against the headboard in a kind of question-mark shape. The others seemed to find this picture funny.
The convention’s guest of honor was Robert Silverberg, who brought Marta Randall with him. I had met Bob in 1973, when I was a mere teen and he was GoH at Bubonicon, Albuquerque’s convention. I remember a very pleasant conversation with Bob by the pool, and I assume he only talked to me because I’d told him I was trying to teach an honors class in SF at UNM, with The Science Fiction Hall of Fame as a text. Since he’d edited that collection, he could only approve. Alas, the UNM Honors Department did not.
At Leprecon we New Mexicans were chatting in a corner of the con suite when Bob and Marta abruptly joined us. They were in flight from a group he described as “solemn assholes,” and was looking for more congenial company. I made a point of not being solemn for the rest of the con, though whether I escaped assholery remains an open question.
Bob, who was in the middle of a twelve-year period of wearing nothing but huaraches on his feet, was very annoyed at having to walk through snow. He had thought Arizona was warmer.
So when I revisited this scene with Kathy a couple weeks ago, I provided myself with warmer clothing and a pair of proper shoes. Let it not be said that I fail to profit by experience.
