I make my living in my head. I write - novels, television, film - other people's worlds and my own. It's good work, and it's loud. A mind that builds stories all day doesn't stop on command. It churns. It circles back. It goes places I'd rather it didn't.

Because of that, I've always chased the vanishing point - moments when everything drops away and I can just be. I first found it rock climbing in high school. With air below me, one hand jammed into a granite crack, and the other slotting a piece of protection, the world went quiet. No past. No tests. No me. Just the next hold. I've chased that quiet ever since - steep snow, thin ridgelines. Places that force focus. Places where mistakes matter.

With COVID stress beating down, I pushed harder than ever, junkie-lunging for that next hit of peace. It should have happened on the rock, on the bike, on the mountain. Instead, my breakpoint came in a strip-lit gym.

Burpees and box jumps into sprints. My least favorite. I'm not a runner - wasn't a runner. I ran in service of - skiing, climbing, or just getting there faster. But running itself? So dull. So monotonous. So much mind-chatter.

Back to sprints. A step back, tension-coil, engaging all the power I could muster. Explosive kick - and SNAP - a whipping crack through the gym. Sharp, violent.

I was almost certain it came from me.

Yup - white-hot, all-consuming fire seared up my calf. I crumpled. Just as fast - it vanished. No pain, no pull, nothing. Except the gym had gone still - people frozen mid-rep, all eyes on me.

A man stared down - sheet white.

"You heard that, right?"

"The… whole gym did," he said, saucer-eyed.

Okay. This is real. I'm in trouble.

Look down.

No - it's gonna be bad.

Do it.

I did it. No bone. No blood. Just a leg - skinny and pale.

In a Dorothy-in-flight dream state, I stood. I took a step. And I had enough time on my way back to the floor to realize that my calf was completely out of business. No liquidation sale - just gone.

Some toxic mix of shock and embarrassment took me. I stumbled to my feet, mumbled something unintelligible and hobbled out of the gym. Not proud of this, but I drove myself to the hospital. With my left foot flopping, diagnosis wasn't challenging.

The day before shutdown, I went under the knife for a ruptured Achilles. Surgery went well. I got released, got home, and then a new reality settled. Fixing a tendon takes patience and stillness. I'm not great at either. The leg withered. Just walking again took months. We all wallowed during the shutdown - but I really leaned in.

Then, Jeb called.

In high school, Jeb taught me to climb, and we've scared each other through all sorts of adventures in the years since. He decided I needed a goal. Something big and ridiculous.

I had recently rafted the Grand Canyon, and the words just slipped out:

"Rim to Rim to Rim?"

That's fifty miles through the heart of the Canyon. Down one side, up the other, and back again - all in one go. Ten thousand feet of climbing. Jeb committed on the spot.

In my condition, R2R2R was more fantasy than goal. I could barely walk, and I hated to run. But, I loved the dream.

One step became two, then ten, then more. And I could walk again. Each day, each step, there was only the next and the next.

And finally - a year and a half after the snap heard 'round the gym, I was ready.

--

4:15 a.m., hotel alarm blaring. The invariable, inevitable urge to turn it off and sleep. No one should be doing this. And not at this hour.

I get up, dragging reality back from dream. A groggy drive to the lodge and then bus out to the South Kaibab trailhead.

I'm not strong enough, trained enough - good enough.

Doubt sinks and settles as I take in the golden gods around me. Everyone - Jeb included - looks fitter, stronger - like they belong. I'm the faker. The imposter, awkward in my running kit.

Movement drags me back.

Headlamps on, we descend, mist diffusing silhouettes of juniper and pinyon.

Sunrise at the Grand Canyon. From darkness, clean-line contours of ancient stone - gold-red. So real it feels fake. Still. Scale beyond comprehension.

Down we go.

I love the mountains. That's my comfort zone. Ozone-charged air - molecules moving faster - ascent energizes. It's gain, effort, achievement - pushing that little bit closer to the sun.

But dropping into the Canyon is surrender. A fall into deep time. It is uniquely vulnerable. It is weight, and press, and presence. It is slow power.

We skitter down. Jeb and I take pictures. We laugh. We meet other runners - most pass us. And we fall into our planet's adolescence - undulating layers, ancient seas, the beauty of becoming. It's weird and wonderful. And my feet hurt.

Descending, the pull grows - a slow, awesome timesense - millions of years laid bare. The need to make miles succumbs to sensation. The burnt smell of high desert. The flit and fall of swifts overhead. The trail steepens to switchbacks. Through a tunnel and back into the shock-light of day.

Above, layers of deep brown sandstone. Below, silk grey rock cambers and bends - Vishnu Schist. In the space between, over a billion years have vanished. This is the Great Unconformity - a gap that exists across the globe. Below you, right now, wherever you are, a billion years of history is missing. That’s an impossible number - more time than multicellular life has existed. One quarter of Earth's story - gone. There are theories, but I prefer to hold the mystery.

Does my knowing all this impact the sensation of passing through the Canyon's basement rocks? I can't say. But I feel more weight. A deeper silence. A crushing sense of age.

And we hit bottom.

The Colorado River winds, silent and immense, as we step onto the bridge.

I walk the span. Look out. Breathe in.

I pull in the river's power and play - crystal froth on emerald swells. Silken flow masking monumental force.

And even the Colorado - this ancient, relentless presence - is now cut and cornered. We dammed it. Held it back. Created Lake Powell above. We control this flow.

Even here - so far down, so deep in time - we've marked the earth.

Jeb and I reach Phantom Ranch - an oasis tucked into the bones of the world.

Cabins, trees, picnic tables. A canteen selling lemonade and postcards. Real toilets. Running water. Shade.

After miles of silence and stone, it feels like a hallucination - summer camp dropped into a cathedral.

We refill bottles and take it in.

This began as a mission. R2R2R. But now, deep in the Canyon, it feels like something else. It's less about making time, more about feeling place. On a whim, I ask the operator if any rooms are available. Phantom Ranch books out a year in advance. Silly to even ask. But I do - and there are. I glance at Jeb. He nods.

Excitement. And - right after - the ego sting that the other me - the outside me - won't be able to boast about finishing in one go. No one cares, and it still eats at me. Strava will be disappointed - all 30 of my followers. I do it anyway. We'll run north, turn and have a place to stay the night.

We run the slow incline along Bright Angel Creek. The canyon narrows - black walls press in, then open to high desert.

With time on our side, Jeb and I veer off toward Ribbon Falls (Chimik’yana’kya dey’a). From the trail, it doesn't look like much. Just a crease in the stone.

We bushwhack in - scrambling, ducking branches - and emerge to an oasis.

A waterfall spills from the ledge above, cascading mist and prismatic light. Over millennia, minerals from that fall have built a moss-covered travertine dome thirty feet tall.

The falls have shaped their own altar.

We wander up and behind the falls - visions of the canyon misting through spray. I put my hand to the moss, springy and succulent, a soft wonder amid angle and spire. This is a place of origin for the Zuni. That feels true. There's weight here. Something ancient, fertile and fearsome. The falls pound into green moss and the pool below. Lighted mist softens the cliffs beyond. What better place to come into this world?

We wander back to the trail, awe-shocked. We run. We hike. The ascent to the North Rim slips into gray - majesty overload. Green edges the canyon as we climb, and pain settles on us both.

Heading back toward Phantom, ache bears down. Just before nightfall, I make out swifts shooting through a light rain. I surf a sea of pain into limbo. Step on step. Turn on turn. A shock-white sky rips me back - lightning-lit. A jolt across the universe. No sound. Locked deep in the canyon, it feels like a system glitch. One more reminder that this place runs on different code.

And finally - Phantom Ranch. We shuffle into our cabin and devour the most delicious stew in the history of stew. Later, I sprawl on a picnic table, staring up at a wash of stars, pin-hole bright. I feel small. I feel open. Contented insignificance. I lie there, deep in the earth - rooted in a thrumming present. The stillness of rock. The slow, relentless rush of water. Frothing time. I exist. I am part of grand things.

My body rejects sleep. I swim through half-dreams, phantom hallucinations. Sweating hot, ice cold. Fight and flight battle. Night lasts a lifetime. Lasts minutes.

Best breakfast ever. Eggs, sausage, pancakes, coffee! Then, Jeb and I force tired legs to climb Bright Angel Trail up the Canyon's face. Time and space feel slippery - reality unsettled. And we switch up and back, rising through millennia - step by step.

Emerging from liminal, reality slams down. The murmur of conversation. Laughter. High schoolers blast music. The scratching and scraping of others. People-shock.

And then - we're done. Topped out. Back in the froth of humanity at the Canyon's rim. Kids offer us watermelon - the taste sweet and strong. We fight for space with tourists, fight to hold grace.

We turn from the Canyon. To the car, to the hotel, to dinner, to sleep.

Whatever dreams may come - I want more of the Canyon's reality. A day ago, I wasn't a runner. I am now.