Very Grand Canyon

I know I haven’t written in a couple of days and you’re anxious to follow what’s been happening on our trip. So I’ll start with the dialysis portion. I had dialysis Saturday again in Tuba City, AZ, on the Navajo reservation. It was an eye-opener. The staff was very competent and my nurse treated me beautifully, and I had a more than adequate dialysis. They left me a little under my dry weight with no complications, which made me very happy. The thing that most interested me about the dialysis unit in Tuba City was how impoverished the whole community was. It made me very sad to think that the Native Americans have suffered so much and continue to, and it’s reflected in the way they’re living today. It was a large dialysis center, I think with 28 chairs, and all but two were filled with Native Americans, who have a large incidence of kidney failure caused by diabetes. All my fellow dialysis patients were cheerful and friendly and accepting of me although, as my nurse on Thursday, Sammy Manymules, said to me, “We don’t see too many of you guys.” Now on to the awesome part of this weekend, our trip to the Grand Canyon. It’s called Grand for a reason. The views are spectacular. They leave me without words, but I’m going to try. What I felt when I first gazed upon the wonder of it was how insignificant I really was, how we all are. At the same time I can’t help but feel that it brings out the poet in everyone. I only wish that everybody that I care about and love—family,friends—will one day get to see what I saw today. I feel so small and insignificant because the sheer size of it is so daunting, the expanse of the canyon, the hundreds of millions of years it took to be created by the mighty Colorado River. You and I are merely a blink of the eye in the larger scheme of things. It makes me feel not so bad about turning 57 next week. So stay tuned—tomorrow will be another day of magnificence and beauty, wherever we go.