by Kerri Rawson
“That’s okay! We’ve got plenty!”
Dad and I encouraged him down the trail and laid him on Dad’s mat. I sat down close to him, making sure he was drinking, and we wet a bandana, putting it over his head. We also washed his eyes out with water. He didn’t have any sunglasses, and he seemed to have sunburned his eyes, telling us his eyes felt gritty and painful.
Dad took Brian’s water bottles that held the contaminated water from Monument Creek and filtered it into clean bottles. It wasn’t the most sanitary way to go about it—but we needed water for three now.
Brian told us he rested for two days and hiked along the rim trail on the third day to build some strength. He’d taken a bus to the head of Hermit yesterday morning and hiked all day, knowing on day four we would be at Monument. He told us how hairy Hermit was and how worried he was about us. When he came across the sandal on the sign at the fork, he thought it was my shoe and was frightened, afraid something had happened to me.
Brian told us, “I kept going, as far as I could.”
Nine miles. He hiked in one day what had taken us two and a half—with sleep and decent food.
He stopped last night above the drop to Monument Creek. He shone his flashlight around for a few minutes but couldn’t make out the trail.
My heart caught in my chest. “We saw a light,” I said it with my head down. Ashamed we didn’t go to help.
“I decided to stay where I was. I propped myself up against a rock. Slept that way. At one point a small rattler came by. I killed it with a rock. And just in case, I cut it in two with my knife. I was terrified the entire night.”
A sharp sting was filling my guts—Brian alone, all night, up there. Terrified. And we hadn’t done anything.
“When I got to Monument this morning, I was so glad to see water, but then I wasn’t sure if I should drink it. I took a wrong turn, went south for a while, toward the rim, up a drainage. Couldn’t find the trail. Got turned around, lost. Everything looks the same. Finally found the way up and out and told myself to keep going. Got here. Heard voices. So I yelled.”
“We’re so glad you’re okay.” And we proceeded to tell him about the last four insane days.
CHAPTER 15
Coming Back from the Abyss Doesn’t Have to Be So Dramatic
6:00 P.M.
SALT CREEK
Late in the afternoon, we decided we should move on after letting Brian rest for a few hours. I was surprised he was able to go on, but he seemed stronger than we’d initially thought. By six o’clock, the three of us were descending along the pink-and-white streaked ridges of Salt Creek after passing by the Alligator and the Inferno, names for buttes that rose below the rim. We had hiked two miles since leaving Cedar Spring and were making good time considering the current state of our hiking party.
Having Brian back raised my spirits; I no longer noticed the heat or the distance. I was learning to make larger strides with my head up, to take in what was in front of me instead of fretting over my foot placement. I was learning to trust myself and the worn path under my boots. Even though it didn’t look possible to go forward, the trail always led around the gaping expanses—it stayed steady, constant. The trail never fought against the terrain but went with it, alongside it, in tandem.
As our light began to fade, Brian told us again he couldn’t see very well. We stayed as close as we could to him, Dad calling out what was coming next while I walked behind Brian to help with light. The three of us hiked for hours using our Maglites, continually checking on each other, encouraging each other to keep going.
Boot by boot, foot by foot, we crossed five more miles of the vast platform after leaving Salt. Through sure, stubborn willpower and internal strength, the three of us made it to camp.
What would have happened if Dad and I hadn’t stopped at Cedar? Would Brian have been able to get down to shade? Would he have been able to cover this distance on his own?
Brian could have died if he hadn’t made it to us.
I wasn’t just tired at Cedar earlier; it was as if I had been burdened to stay longer—an internal feeling to stay put. Was that you, God?
10:00 P.M.
HORN CREEK
By the grace of God, we found our way into camp at Horn Creek in the pitch black sometime around ten o’clock, our lights bouncing around the barren campsite—no tents, no A. D. We hoped that meant he had gone on toward Indian Garden.
Even though the camp was bare, Dad sought out our assigned spot, marked with a letter and a number on a wooden sign.
Brian needed shelter, so I set up my one-man for him, and Dad cooked us a packet of food. Brian ate crossed-legged in the tent. Right after he ate, he conked out. Dad and I laid down our ground cloth again, covered in fine red dust, and slept outside under the stars for the last night.
DAY SIX
We set out early from Horn, facing seven and a half miles and an ascent of three thousand feet, hoping to reach the rim by nightfall.
As we meandered east, the early morning light was hitting the pink expanses of Battleship. Dad had said we would be coming up on it on this day and by dang—we were. Felt good, getting this far.
As we rounded an edge, my worn-down boot caught on a rock.
“Ah—heck! Ankle went.”
I sat down, hesitantly removed my boot with a grimace, and Dad looked over my foot. We decided the best course was to wrap it with a bandage and keep moving.
I put my boot back on and laced it up, standing up slowly. It held my weight.
11:00 A.M.
INDIAN GARDEN—BRIGHT ANGEL TRAIL
We made it into Indian Garden midmorning. My ankle was sore, but I was managing with a bit of a hobble.
A surreal scene greeted us after our week in the great empty beyond—water, huts, trees, and people. Gobs of them milling around, most looking much cleaner and put together than us, and some of them now staring at us.
I looked down at myself. My legs were caked in red, sandy dirt, and by the looks on people’s faces, I might have been covered all the way to my head.
We made our way over to a water pump and a few folks stepped out of our way, letting us cut in front of them.
Do we look that bad?
After filling our bottles and chugging down a good amount of cool, fresh water, we set off for some shade.
A park ranger saw us, asked how we were, and wondered where we had come from. Dad dug out our permit, but the ranger didn’t ask to see it.
I wanted to give this guy a piece of my mind: rockslides, cliffs, trails without water. But the three of us were polite—something about talking to someone in a uniform and official hat.
Dad settled in under some trees, deciding to make himself some ramen noodles for an early lunch. But we still had five miles and three thousand feet to go. I didn’t want to stop.
“Since there are so many people here and Bright Angel looks like a highway—folks coming down and going up—could Brian and I go on ahead? Meet you at the top?”
Dad said okay and Brian and I set out, knowing even with my bum ankle and his exhaustion we could make quicker time than Dad, who was still weighted down with a substantial pack. If you carry it in, you carry it out.
From Indian Garden, you can see the rim but you can’t make out the whole trail. I knew it was up there, though. Five miles and three thousand feet to a hot shower and decent food.
We’ve got this. No problem.
4:00 P.M.
MILE-AND-A-HALF REST HOUSE
Around five hours into our climb and with a good stop at the rest house, we had made it up two thousand feet of winding switchbacks. Even though we were ascending the whole time, red, smooth Bright Angel was a dream after rocky, scary Hermit and taxing Tonto. It was wide, which was good because people were often passing us coming down as we climbed up. I was surprised this late in the day to see day hikers still headed down, carrying little. I doubted they understood how long it could take to go back up.
Brian’s vision had i
mproved, and even with my bum ankle it was a good day, a quiet one, side by side with him, talking off and on, encouraging each other. Occasionally one of us would lag and the other one would stop and yell back down the trail, “Come on, it’s only twenty more steps up to here!”
It wasn’t far between stretches, and turn after turn, we had almost made it. Near a mile to go, we began to think of all the food we could eat back in the normal world. Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Arby’s: we were talking our way through menus as we climbed.
More and more, we passed signs of civilization: ice cream cones, flat pavement, indoor plumbing. A sturdy metal railing to keep you from going over the edge. Where was that when I needed it six days ago?
My tattered right boot hit the first blessed step of the man-made walkway.
A knock, straight down from the heavens, hit me on my head, and before my sturdy left boot set down, God said, Hey, we had a deal. I have held up my end. Now it’s your turn!
Floored, I halted in my tracks. Seriously? Right now? You’re doing this right now?
Yes.
Resigned, I accepted my fate: Okay, all right, all right. You’ve got me.
6:00 P.M.
SOUTH RIM—THIRTY MILES HIKED
We made it out of the beast and ran into A. D., who was waiting nearby. He had a big grin on his face, clean clothes on, and looked much better off than we did. He’d gone on from Horn last evening after realizing it was barren and the water wasn’t safe, spending the night in Indian Garden. He climbed out earlier today, rode a bus down to the van, and checked into our room, which wasn’t far.
A. D. said he would wait for Dad; Brian and I should go on to the hotel.
Inside our room, I called Mom in Phoenix and filled her in on one heck of a story, skirting around the worst of it. Then I got in the shower. I won’t ever forget seeing red dirt and sand wash down my legs and pile near the drain while I stood under the water.
After putting on clean clothes, I headed back to the rim, and around 7:30 p.m., I got to watch Dad come up the last leg. He was tired but happy to see us and the end of the trail.
We ended up eating a late dinner that night at a fancy restaurant overlooking the rim. While waiting for our table, the bartender served us pineapple juice in chilled glasses and we all slugged them back like we were drinking the finest liquor to be found. When we got to our table, the waiter asked what he could do for us and we told him to keep the water coming.
The four of us sat around our table that night with huge grins on our faces, stuffing ourselves full. Dad didn’t even look at the bill, just handed the waiter his credit card.
That night, I fell asleep on the floor, tucked into my sleeping bag, marveling at the carpet and air conditioning, already missing the Milky Way.
PART III
Love Will Never Fail You
Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.
—1 CORINTHIANS 13:7–8 PHILLIPS
CHAPTER 16
Find a Hope and a Future
JUNE 1997
WICHITA
A month out of the canyon, I was sitting on my bed at my home in Wichita when I felt the prompting of God—a tugging on my spirit.
We had a deal. Go find your Bible.
I’ve often met God with a sigh, resignation, sometimes downright belligerence: I don’t wanna.
Bible.
All right.
I looked around the wooden bookshelves in my room and didn’t see it. After a search that included crawling under my bed, I found my red leather Bible, given to me at confirmation, my name inscribed in gold on the cover. I dusted it off and haphazardly flipped it open, falling on Job—in spite of everyone and everything he lost, he remained faithful.
In mid-August, I moved back to Boyd—this time to a single room on the third floor. We would move me and my carloads of stuff back and forth for the next four years to the same tiny, peaceful room, with its view of the tall pines and park across the circle drive.
On my first Sunday evening back, two girls knocked on my door. “Hey, we’re from Campus Crusade. Would you like to go to a picnic?” I could smell the cookout from my window, and I was hungry. As I headed down the stairs, my spirit leaped a tiny bit—recognizing something it knew in them. God? Is this your doing?
They invited me to a Bible study that fall and patiently answered my questions, ranging from Genesis to Revelation. These women did “quiet times” with God, and I dutifully tried to do the same with my Bible, journal, and note cards for scripture memorization. But I quickly wanted to rebel against the Christian disciplines of being quiet, still, and getting up early.
I was also torn between these new people coming into my life while trying to hold on to my old group. After a final falling out, I finally laid down the past hard year—here, God, take it. I can’t anymore. I called my folks, begging to quit school and come home. They told me I had to stay through the week and Dad would drive up on Friday. Dad drove up and a few days later drove me back to school, a little more able to face the rest of my fall semester.
My parents and brother began to visit Manhattan regularly. They often came up in the fall, decked out in purple to tailgate before football games. Dad called us the K-State faithful, and he embraced the games with gusto, yelling “K! S! U!” and trying to do the moves to “The Wabash Cannonball.”
One game, after a touchdown, Dad and Brian lifted me high and passed me on to the waiting crowd behind us—surfing me to the top. Saturdays were magical, standing for hours next to the guys, yelling till we were hoarse.
I met Darian in August 1998. Darian says he remembers seeing me for the first time in a purple KSU T-shirt, my hair long and wavy, heading into the dining center. I remember meeting him while I was standing in the doorway of his dorm room, and I should have realized then—when I noticed his soft brown eyes tucked behind wire-rims, his gentle smile, and the way he wore his short light-brown hair—I was going to have a problem.
Or maybe he was going to be a problem when I noticed his black leather jacket hanging on the corner of his loft bed. I was curious about this eighteen-year-old freshman who had art supplies scattered across his desk, hockey sticks propped up in the corner of his room, and a black-and-white guitar plugged into an amp with punk rock stickers declaring their allegiance.
But my heart was wandering in other directions, and my feelings about Darian over the first fifteen months I knew him bounced between aggravation and pleasant surprise. I even spent a fair amount of time convincing a few friends he was irksome and they should not date him. They didn’t.
I didn’t date anyone else either. I tended to like guys who had only a vague interest in me, and then they’d hand me the dreaded I-like-you-like-a-Christian-sister card.
I read, more than once, Elisabeth Elliot’s Passion and Purity, definitely in need of both, and would hand my worn copy to friends who came to my dorm room weepy and fretting. I’d been encouraged to pray for my future husband but found my mind wandering during these feeble attempts, far away from anything looking like prayer or patience.
I was trying to walk the walk but often fell flat on my face. I reckoned God likely got the raw end of that deal we made in the canyon, but I was also sure there were no take-backs. I was his daughter, whether I wanted to be or not.
Darian and I were part of a raucous group of friends who lived in the dorms next to each other; we’d push several tables together for meals. I’d miss out on dinner the evenings I was on dish duty—having begun a job for measly pay in the dining center. I usually scraped plates as they rotated around a carousel, stacked three high. Darian and a few other guys thought it was funny to leave me messages in their leftovers—I could hear their howls of laughter as the plates came around. It was not the way to get a girl’s attention.
I didn’t work Thursday nights so I could walk with this group to nearby Campus Crusade
gatherings for praise and worship and a talk on faith. On the weekends, we might build bonfires at Pottawatomie Lake, make s’mores, and sing worship songs. We’d wrap up Saturday nights with a late-night, or early-morning, breakfast at Village Inn and try hard to get up in time for church a few hours later. Some of us were better at getting up on Sunday mornings than others.
Finishing up my third year, I was still struggling in some of my classes—not always putting in the effort, time, and work they required, falling into bad habits, scraping by semester after semester. I was passing but had long ago lost my scholarship and any shot at veterinary school. But it wasn’t until the second semester of my junior year—the spring of 1999—that I finally worked up the courage to tell my parents the news over dinner.
I felt like God was redirecting me—changing my heart.
I told my parents that I had switched my major to life sciences and education with the intent of becoming a teacher. I was afraid it would crush my dad; he had dreamed right alongside me that I would become a vet. When I told him, his face fell and his eyes clouded, but he rebounded, saying, “That’s okay. I know how hard college is; you’re doing your best.”
It was the hardest thing I ever had to tell him. Because I hadn’t been trying my hardest or doing my best.
CHAPTER 17
Fall in Love at Least Once in Your Life
NOVEMBER 1999
KANSAS
Why did you swerve?” Darian questioned my driving ability as we headed to Wichita in my maroon Dodge Aries for Thanksgiving break. My parents bought my grandparents’ old car for me so I could get back and forth to an elementary school in Manhattan where I was attending my first college practicum. I was happier now that I’d switched majors.
We were driving south on Route 77, in chunky drizzle. It was bouncing off the windshield and getting stuck in the wipers.
