Reflections from a Week Deep in the Grand Canyon

Last week I spent seven days river rafting through 190 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.  The Grand Canyon compares in my mind to the Louvre in Paris or to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.  They are so big you cannot grasp them in just a few days.  Of course the Grand Canyon is WAY bigger than the Louvre or the Smithsonian, but you know what I mean.

Last summer when I was standing on the north rim and looking out over the 18 mile gap between the north and south rim I said to myself, "There is no way this Canyon was formed by one river over millions of years."  In fact, the whole gradualism, particle-by-particle erosion theories seem very contrived to me.  What seems more obvious is that the Canyon was formed by a massive cataclysmic event sometime in the past.  My week deep inside the canyon gave me about 100 reasons to see and believe that with deep conviction.

We had not been on the river more than five minutes when we stopped and hiked up the other side of Lee's Ferry.  The Ferry had been used in the early days (before the Navajo Bridge nearby, built in 1928) to transport people from Arizona up to Utah, especially Mormons and especially newly married Mormons who wanted their weddings to be consecrated in their temple in Salt Lake City.  The "Honeymoon Trail" from pioneer wagons can still be seen etched in the rocks near Lee's Ferry.

At this site, we came across a petrifying tree that was fairly large.  In some ways it looks like any other tree that you would see in a forest that has fallen and is in the midst of its decaying process.  But the Grand Canyon is not a forest, it is a desert (and believe me the 100+ degree temperature and barren landscape was a reminder).  Our guide, Tom Vail from Canyon Ministries asked "Where do you think this tree came from?"  Silence.  I piped up, "I think it came from the forest up in Utah and floated down here in a flood."  Tom nodded with that look that your high school teacher gave you when you were almost right.  "Look carefully at the interior chunks from the tree."  We did.  "Pines and Redwoods and evergreen trees that grow in north American forests have concentric circles.  We can tell how old they are by counting the concentric circles."  Problem:  there were no concentric circles.  "So, Tom, what kind of tree is this?"  "It's a Fern Tree, he replied."  A what?  I didn't voice my thought because I didn't want to get that "you're almost right look again" but I thought to myself, "isn't a fern a plant that grows at the bottom of a forest about 12-24 inches high in shade and lots of moisture?"  What's a Fern Tree? Tom went on, "My wife and I saw a Fern Tree about 15 to 20 feet tall in Fiji one time."  That's all he said and we moved up a hill about 30 feet.

Plain as day in front of me at our next stop was a coral fossil embedded in a large sandstone rock and near it were coral and Brachiopod fossils (see picture below).

The white slender and long pieces above are coral and the shell-like fossils are Brachiopods

Here's a coral fossil embedded in sandstone

So, the obvious question is: What is a tropical tree, coral and coral fragments and sea creatures doing in the middle of the desert?

The evidence that I saw last week points to a cataclysmic event sometime in our past that threw our entire world into absolute chaos.  Sea life was pushed up onto continents and massive rivers were formed when new mountain ranges were formed.  I'll write more about that later.