Carey Dillinger, July, 1995
The Daily Commercial
According to statistics kept by the National Park Service, five million folks are expected to visit Grand Canyon National Park this year. Only 10 percent of those visitors will make the five hour, 217 mile car ride to the north rim. The remaining 4.5 million tourists will spend an average of eight hours riding the south rim in cars and shuttle buses, exiting their vehicles for only forty-five minutes of viewing pleasure. That's too bad. While the south rim is crowded, hot, dry and feels like downtown; the north rim (only twelve air miles away) is cooler in every respect. There are no crowds to fight, and the air is more temperate and contains enough humidity to make Floridians comfortable.
Perhaps it was only good luck that allowed our family to travel to the north rim and meet the most enlightening and entertaining ranger that we have ever met on an excursion into a National Park. However, due to the overall impact that this young woman had on our perception of life in these United States, we believe that more than luck was involved.
Mercy Aiken is one of the interpretative rangers working on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. This is her third summer season on the north rim and because she has recently finished her college degree and will not be returning to school this September, she will be working on through the fall. As an interpretative ranger (as opposed to a law enforcement ranger), her duties include such activities as guiding tourists on nature walks and giving informative talks at the campground amphitheater. It is an evening tradition in the campgrounds of our National Park System for an interpretative ranger to present a slide show depicting the local flora and fauna and involve the campers in a discussion on the chosen topic. Occasionally, these talks can tend to be boring, however, Ranger Aiken's slide presentation and talk is so unique, so personal, and so full of love, that even the most cynical and worldly among her listeners have their hearts touched by her message. Mercy Aiken grew up in the Grand Canyon.
Mercy Aiken is the eldest child of Bruce and Mary Aiken. She and her younger siblings, Shirley and Silas, were raised in a home located five miles down the North Kaibab trail in the Grand Canyon. Her father operates the fresh water pumping station that supplies the Park Service's north rim facilities. Eight months of the year the family lives in a home that is only accessible by foot trail, helicopter or on mule back.
Education for the children was provided by their parents except during the three or four months the family moved out of the canyon each winter. There is no television in the Grand Canyon. The closest place to get an ice cream cone is a six and one-half mile walk. One way. Straight up. There is however, music, books, and good conversation provided by the family and their endless stream of guests. Very few nights go by that some hikers do not stop by the Aiken residence in search of water, food, medical attention, or a place to rest. While it is not their job to provide such services, the family has taken on the task with patience and good humor.
Entertainment and recreation in the Grand Canyon is largely of the homemade variety. To play softball, the family would often recruit passing hikers or trail crews to round out their roster. The children were forced by their circumstances to devise their own games and recreation. Some of these activities involved playing pranks on the unsuspecting hikers on the Kaibab Trail. One popular activity for the children was to dress in mismatched clothing or inappropriate hiking clothes, such as formal evening wear, and slip up on some weary,unsuspecting hikers. The kids would then affect "foreign" accents and ask the hikers directions, then go on their merry way.
Living in the canyon two-thirds of the year precluded the Aiken children from being continually involved in organized sports and recreational activities. Did they suffer in their physical and social growth because they did not ride on the ever spinning merry-go-round of peewee football, mini-basketball and Little League baseball? To the contrary, not having their lives perfectly organized by some adult leader or coach allowed them to invent their own games, discover information using their own intuition, and basically fan the flames of self-discovery that many educators find lacking in the general student population today.
One of Bruce Aiken's reasons for coming to the Grand Canyon and moving his family into it, was to separate them from the crime, pollution, and overcrowding he had experienced growing up in New York. While many of us have moved to small towns or rural areas to hopefully achieve the same goals, most of us would be unwilling to give up our friends and families or even our vehicles and our televisions. It is ironic that the Aiken children were exposed to a large cross section of the world's population because of living in the Grand Canyon. The immense number of hikers traversing the canyon each year are as diverse in their cultural, ethnic, and historical backgrounds as can be found in any metropolitan area in the world.
The Aiken's are to be commended for providing their children with a well rounded upbringing in what seems to us "surface-dwellers" as untenable conditions. It can be shown through their example that a loving, caring family overcomes obstacles that many people expect the government, schools or churches to hurdle for them. These organizations, as well as day care centers and city recreation departments can never replace the nuclear family in the child rearing process. Few, if any, of these groups would be willing to take our children from Lake County to the Grand Canyon. If they would, the precious moment when those children behold that awesome spectacle would form a bond that would last their entire lives. The bond would not be between each individual child and his parent, but instead between the child and his chaperone or counselor. No wonder so many children today think they do not need Mom and Dad. They have been conditioned to think this way because their lives have been organized and arranged, so that in many cases and for most practical purposes, they don't need their parents!
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