Don’t be fooled by the title and subtitle of this book. A quiet, easy ramble through a pleasant, unthreatening landscape, like a neighborhood park, is what we would usually consider “a walk in the park,” but that is far different than the “walk” that is the narrative thread of this wonderful and important book. It is, literally, an account of a walk in a park, Grand Canyon National Park, but it is about as far from the outing denoted by that phrase as a walk could be.
As for the “misadventure” in the subtitle, when photographer Pete McBride invited his sometimes colleague Kevin Fedarko to join him for a “through hike” of the Grand Canyon, neither of them seems to have had a clue about what they were getting themselves into.
They would start at Lee’s Ferry where the Colorado River enters the canyon and finish a tortuously winding 800 miles of severe hiking later at the Grand Wash Cliffs where the canyon ends. They would be backpacking most of the way over trailless and extreme terrain. Fedarko and McBride were indeed setting themselves up for a “misadventure” of epic proportions, but that is not how it turned out. With a lot of help from a community they barely knew, it turned into an epic adventure, after the initial misadventure.
Veteran backpackers will come away very impressed with their achievement, and likely puzzled that these veteran world travelers launched into such an incredibly difficult traverse of the canyon, on foot, in such ignorance. These guys were in the beginning, as Fedarko humbly admits, terribly overconfident and unprepared.
All readers will be delighted that they were rescued by the Grand Canyon hiking community, made the trip, and told their tale so well, Fedarko in writing this fine book, and McBride in his magnificent large-format photographic work The Grand Canyon: Between River and Rim (2018). Anyone who may have seen the canyon from the rim, hiked one of the trails, rim to river and back up, or simply seen pictures of this amazing place, might ask “Why would someone even consider doing this?” To answer that question, in the case of these two guys, one must read the book(s).
Of course, Fedarko is a professional writer, and McBride a veteran National Geographic photographer — National Geographic supported the “misadventure,” knowing that if they succeeded in hiking the entire canyon, or perhaps even if they didn’t do the whole thing, it would be a great story.
So Fedarko and McBride had professional reasons to make the trip — McBride conceived it and invited Fedarko along, believing that the latter knew the canyon well, and that he was a compelling storyteller having written a blockbuster bestseller about the Colorado River titled The Emerald Mile. Fedarko, it turned out, knew the river part of the Grand Canyon intimately as he had captained a raft for many years in support of dory trips. He describes that phase of his Grand Canyon experience and modestly admits that he wasn’t a good enough river man to guide the dories but became adept enough at the oars to carry supplies and eventually the waste that had to be carried out of the canyon, earning the nickname “Groover.” Fedarko tells a humorous, self-effacing story about his career as a boatman, leading up to the account of the “misadventure.”
Fedarko knew the canyon from the river and had admittedly not thought much about what was up there beyond the towering walls he could see from his raft, never imagining that he would one day wander around up there among the cliffs. So, when McBride asked him to join him for the traverse, he signed up unaware of what might be in store for them walking the canyon instead of floating through it.
He and Pete started their trip “off the couch,” meaning that they indeed thought of the trip as “a walk in the park,” and in a matter of days they realized their folly and gave up, recognizing that there was no possible way they in their naivete could hike all the way through the Canyon. Tails between their legs, they retreated to Kevin’s Flagstaff home. “In just six days, the immense physical demands of moving through stifling heat across all but impossible terrain had broken us to the point where we had collapsed," he writes. "The following day, we ended our bid and headed for home, vowing never to return.”
Fedarko and McBride were not, however, just any two over-confident and ill-prepared fools trying to kill themselves by taking their aspiration lightly – both were known to the Grand Canyon hiking community, and best of all, they had hooked up with one of the greatest contemporary Grand Canyon explorers, Rich Rudow, for that disastrous initial week. Rich and several other canyon veterans were setting out on their own traverse, and Rich as leader had agreed to let them join the expedition. When he learned how out of their depth they were, he got on his satellite phone and sent a message to friends:
- HOWDY FOLKS FROM SOUTH CYN . . .
- PETE AND KEVIN EXITING HERE TOMORROW . . .
- WOULD ANY OF YOU LIKE TO . . .
- HELP THEM . . .
- CONTINUE THEIR HIKE?
Yes, they would, and they did, making their trip possible. How they helped is a great story, canyon hiking veterans allowing them to convert their misadventure to an epic adventure.
There are, of course, many layers of rock in the Grand Canyon — from Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite at the base, to Kaibab Limestone at the rim. Similarly, there are many layers to the story Fedarko tells: his background with the canyon, elements of memoir; stories of early canyon hikers and their contributions to knowledge of this amazing place; anecdotes of the hike over mostly trailless and incredibly rough terrain; bits of geological and natural history; what to do and not to do when hiking such a place; revelations and evidence that Indigenous people lived and traveled all over the canyon; consequences of the horrendous treatment historically and recently of the Indigenous people who still live around the canyon; and much more.
Fedarko skillfully weaves multiple stories into his narrative, breaking up their adventure story by revealing its context. He condenses a mountain of experience and research into a compelling portrait of the Grand Canyon.
With selfless assistance from the amazingly generous Grand Canyon hiking community, they complete the hike in several stages. After much help from the experts, some of whom accompanied them on stages of the trip, and many hiking, climbing, and rappelling adventures, they neared the end of their hike, again with Rich Rudow, and entered what Fedarko described as “The Combat Zone.”
“As we pressed downstream, the sky directly above the river was thronged with helicopters," Fedarko writes. "They flew along both banks as well as above the main current, and in the densest parts of every sortie, as many as ten or 12 machines were visible at once, with at least one passing directly overhead every fifteen to twenty seconds. Each surge would build for several minutes, then subside into a brief lull, followed by another rush.”
How this “Helicopter Alley” came to be is quite a story. A caption of two photos of the action in Helicopter Alley reads, “Each of the tribes of the canyon has a different understanding of its rights and responsibilities when it comes to the land. In the western part of the chasm, the Hualapai have achieved a level of economic prosperity denied to them in the past by flooding the skies above their reservation with hundreds of air tours each day that enable tourists to fly beneath the rims and land next to the river, unaware of the damage they are inflicting on the soundscape.”
Fedarko and McBride loved the canyon and the national park, and learning about its human history, they encountered unexpected dilemmas.
Earlier in their hike, Fedarko and McBride had met Navaho activist Renae Yellowhorse, a leader of opposition to a scheme to build a massive tourist development above and at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers. She explained the sacred significance of this place and opened their eyes to the fact that the ancestral lands of eleven different tribes “either abut or lie directly inside what is now the national park.” Fedarko and McBride had encountered much evidence of early indigenous habitation of the canyon but had been unaware of the ferocious battle raging over developments like Escalade project which, among other features, would build a tramway that would transport up to ten thousand people a day from the rim down to the confluence. It would, on the rim, include a complex of hotels, restaurants, and a movie theater, among other attractions. Then they entered “Helicopter Alley” and wondered how and why such an impactful situation was happening in a national park. The explanation, as Fedarko tells it, alerted them to a future for this park, and others, that was to say the least, worrisome.
Ten days after Kevin and Pete had completed their hike, Fedarko and his brother Aaron hiked part of the Tonto Trail network. They had recently lost their father, who would have loved to do the hike, and it was a time of sharing. They camped one night at a campground, at the time named Indian Gardens, since renamed Havasupai Gardens. Fedarko writes,
We set up our tent in the campground, and that night as I lay and listened to the low voices of the other campers mingling with the rushing waters of the creek and rustling of the leaves in the trees, I found myself thinking back on our journey with Pete, especially through Helicopter Alley, and pondering how egregiously the odds seemed to be stacked against the canyon’s being handed off intact to the next generation, and those to follow.
Despite all the mistakes that have been made – how much of this place has already been impaired or traded away, how swiftly the gains that were made long ago are presently in danger of being rolled back or erased, how egregiously the descendants of the land’s original inhabitants have been marginalized and written out of the story – it struck me then, as it does now, that it’s a miracle that we have any park at all.
Later, in the Epilogue, he adds,
In the years to come, whatever happens in the park will be determined, in large part, by the willingness or refusal of the outside world, especially the Park Service, to regard not just the Hualapai but all who are indigenous to the canyon as neither adversaries to be defeated nor as minions who can be manipulated and instead to embrace them as partners and equals. Because in addition to having shaped the canyon’s past and defined a critical part of its present, the tribes now hold the key to its future,
In the meantime, it’s worth noting that a tentative vision for how a more constructive alliance might at least begin to take shape is offered by what seems to be unfolding at the park’s headquarters.
A Walk in the Park is a marvelous adventure story well told, but also a serious treatment of many issues facing Grand Canyon and other national parks. It is a most enjoyable read, with a sobering moment toward the end when Fedarko reflects on the qualities of the experience that made it so momentous for him and Pete McBride, and the thought that he was glad they had done it when they did for it might not be possible to enjoy the solitude and silence for long, even with great effort, in the most rugged and remote corners of a place like that they had just walked through.
The Grand Canyon is sacred space for Indigenous people, and it should be for the rest of us. Tramways, hotels, helicopter tours have their place, but not in sacred space, and this space should be sacred to all who love the beauty and mystery of such as the Grand Canyon. Most famously, President Theodore Roosevelt, said of the Grand Canyon, “In your own interest and the interest of all the country keep this great wonder of nature as it is now …. You cannot improve upon it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.” Less famously, but equally important to this story, quoted at the beginning of Fedarko’s Prologue to this book, Edward Abbey once wrote, “There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some.” This nicely sets the tone of this wonderful book.
