You Ruin Everything

I just made it home after spending the better part of the week at, and in, the Grand Canyon. The two things I can report are that compliance with the National Park Service’s LOL-WTF edict that everyone must wear masks on busy trails like Bright Angel achieved a solid three percent compliance, or maybe a bit less. Climbing out from the Colorado River to the South Rim with a backpack is…interesting. Doing it in a mask? Sorry, no. I saw a handful of people doing this, out of several hundred, and while I reject authoritarianism, I’m willing to briefly seize absolute power for the sole purpose of forbidding them to reproduce. I’ll be a benevolent temporary dictator, so they’ll still be allowed to perform reproductive acts, but they must, like General Ripper, withhold the life essence. Thus have I declared.

(I reported this deer for its failure to follow COVID protocols. Also for shitting on my campsite. I have video evidence of the defecatory act. I find wildlife very disrespectful of my personal needs — it’s as if they aren’t thinking about me at all!)

Second, I spent my first day in the canyon walking from the Bright Angel trailhead on the South Rim to the Bright Angel Campground, not quite ten miles away. I was looking forward to seeing Phantom Ranch, which has a great history and a cool dining room…

…and to buying a well-earned portion of red wine to celebrate an evening in a beautiful place, as hikers can famously do at the Phantom Ranch canteen:

But the ranger who stopped by my campsite as I set up my tent to check my backcountry permit shook his head when I mentioned that plan: Phantom Ranch isn’t serving beer or wine.

“Oh, no alcohol,” he said. “COVID!”

So I did not drink wine, and friends, he was right: I didn’t get COVID.

I had doubts, but there’s the hard evidence.