To look out towards the stars is to look through time; you don't need to build a time machine, you can see with your very own eyes through thousand, millions and even billions of years gone past. But looking far into the universe is not the only way we can witness so many years of the past unfold before our very eyes, there is also another place where this is possible. It is found in Arizona. And it's once again not created by the human hand, but the natural elements and of course time; One of the strongest hands mother nature has is this, something us mere humans have very little of.
At first this natural time machine looks bare, isolated, uninhabitable and infertile in its majestic baroness. But when you look closer and see past her cocktail of vibrant and warm layers of sunrise medley, there is life. Silent breath exhaled from the preying carnivores, gentle flowing meets roaring thunder of the river, the dancing of the flowering fauna in the tunneling wind, and the clicking hooves of the grazing, cliff-dwelling inhabitants all reveal the bursting diversity of the surface of this mammoth rugged landscape. But the real beauty is how we can witness what lies beneath the concrete surfaces.
Gigantic walls of sandstone, limestone and sedimentary rocks solidified reach out high towards the atmosphere. Whilst standing on the rim of this huge hole, a mere Ant-like human appears to be at sea level; Is it possible that maybe a comet once smashed and indented the Earth to give birth to this spectacular crevice? No, the mere Ant is actually 8000 feet above sea level and the land was sculpted not by alien rock but over time by nature's strongest yet finest force... water; This liquid gradually sinks lower, flowing over and through the Earth, carving and revealing the fantastic and newly formed walls of time. This, my friend, is the time machine.
To stand on the outer rim of the vast orange, cream, rouge and yellow canyon and observe all that's between the 10 mile gap north or the 215 mile tunnel to the east and west, is to witness our very own planet throughout 2 billion years. This is an all natural, 100% organic time machine created and approved by mother nature. Each layer of the ever-rising, forever-changing walls unveiling a different period of age; Prehistoric, Jurassic, Early man, Ice ages, Iron, Silver, Bronze ages, Medieval and present day all stacked and marked as beautifully as different sized books layered one on top of the next ranging from a fat encyclopedia to a hand-held pocket address book.
One of nature's most astounding creations draws millions of tourists every year and in her truly hypnotic way yields the ultimate silence. It's rare to see people talking when they first observe the magnificent gap in the Earth. All one can do is be stunned by the sheer size and beauty that our feeble human eyes try to take in and comprehend, resulting in an automatic loss of breath and a deep tingling sensation within the soul and superficial alike on the skin. All the hairs on your arms and neck will stand and soon you will have no comprehension of time or even how to speak. All you can do is surrender to her magnanimous beauty and enjoy the tiny speck of time the universe granted you to share with this ever-growing natural time line.
We don't need to look far out into space to see through layers of time, Earth's very own time line is right here, and her name is The Grand Canyon.
