The Grand Canyon community is reeling from the loss of the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim from the ongoing Dragon Bravo wildfire. Former park ranger Jessica Pope lived there for nearly a decade and shares this remembrance.
Just tell me a little bit about what the North Rim of the Grand Canyon means to you.
Boy, that’s a tough one. I mean, the Grand Canyon is such an iconic place. Everybody knows of the Grand Canyon. It attracts millions of people every year. But the North Rim, it’s one of those little spots—we only get about 10 percent of the overall visitation of the park. It’s the kind of place where you don’t just stumble across it. People come there with intention. There was never a day, there was never a day when I was working that I didn’t encounter a perfect stranger who was having the most incredible lifechanging experience… You know, my daughter had a baby last Friday, on the 11th, and the thought that my grandchild won’t see this, it’s just almost more than I can stand.
You know, the North Rim isn’t just a tourist stop. For rangers like yourself it was home for a long time.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The rhythms of that place. It’s so high up, you could get snow in June, you could get snow in July. You never know what you got…. The winds, I would sleep at night with my windows open. You could hear the lift of the wind coming up through the Canyon and if you closed your eyes it sounded like ocean waves…. And then of course, being interpretive park rangers, we would be fixated on the fact that the Kaibab Limestone is the floor of an ancient ocean and we’re hearing the ghost winds of the seas that deposited the Kaibab. There was a little story everywhere you turned. There was a little bit of magic everywhere you turned.
When you say that you’re worried your granddaughter won’t be able to see it, are you specifically thinking of the Grand Canyon Lodge?
Yeah, it breaks my heart to think that my grandchildren won’t have that experience to step into that beautiful lobby and then down those stairs into that breathtaking vista through the windows of that sun room…. And you get it, people are like, it’s just a building. The lodge is just a building. But it was more than just a building. The lodge belonged to everybody. You step into that sun room, and it is like stepping into a cathedral. It takes people’s breath away. So many times walking into that room and seeing people standing at those windows, and they’re moved, they’re touched, something changes in them. We need those places. Places like the North Rim and Grand Canyon Lodge, they’re kind of like our public lands version of Notre Dame…. And I got to see that over and over again; I got to see how places like the North Rim have a profound effect on the human spirit, and how we need them, how we need those spaces…. That thought that no one might ever experience that again is more than I can stand. You know, we rebuilt Notre Dome. I hope our country decides to rebuild the Grand Canyon Lodge.
Jessica, I know this is so difficult to talk about. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your thoughts with me.
Thank you.
