When I stepped off the shuttle bus into the cool, pre-dawn darkness, there was just a thin glowing line above the far rim of the Grand Canyon. For a lovely fifteen minutes, I had the remote lookout to myself, until a young couple walked up, pushing their two-year old in a stroller. They, for some reason, felt the need to stand right next to me and talk incessantly in Hindi, spoiling the reverent hush of the scene.
By the time the sun rose to eye the keyhole of space under the cloud cover, a small crowd had gathered. The dawn seemed to disappoint most of them. Within a half hour, everyone had headed back on the bus, including the Chatters, but not after the couple shot albums of photos of each other, including one of them changing their son on a park podium.
But I lingered. If I judged the clouds right, there’d be dramatic light coming soon. I walked to a nearby vista point, found a bench and waited.
As the first streaks broke through the canopy, I gingerly edged myself out onto a promontory. My internal acrophobia alarms were sounding, but the view was worth the mild terror. As the clouds continued to part, I clicked away.
Soon, a man I recognized from the first lookout approached my spot. In his mid-forties, with a friendly face, he smiled when I said, “The others left too soon.” We shot side-by-side, not only on the point but later, when we noticed mule deer in the scrubby brush near the bus stop.
His name was Jans. He and his wife were German, here on vacation. We had become friends for the moment, drawn together by a love of photography and a willingness to be patient for the right shot to come along.
It’s not a bad lesson to take away from the day, applicableto so much in life. Practice remaining just a little longer – for the light to shift, for a friend to have the las tword, for an idea to germinate. That lesson was in play the night before, when we came across an unexpected worship service along the rim trail, led every night by a team of college students. We hesitated, saying we’d sit for a bit. That bit became the whole. I’m glad we stayed. No cathedral could match the grandeur of that setting for our singing. Familiar truths had new power. It truly moved me.
The enemy of insight is hurry. It’s good to learn to linger.
There just may be a memory in the waiting.
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