“Don Lago writes beautifully about beautiful places. This book is a love letter to the Grand Canyon, but it’s also more than that: Lago complicates–in necessary, deeply factual and lyrical fashion–the various human relationships to one of the great wonders of the world. Looking beyond the easy vista, Lago sees a web connecting indigenous cultures to scientific cosmologies, self to stone, humans to the long history of the nonhuman, which Lago lays bare. Along the way, we learn about everything from the history of the kayak to the reminders of stromatolites, from the sad history of suicides at the canyon to the redemptive power of deep time. We’re even awed by a rabbit–who races under Lago’s truck to escape a pack of coyotes. This intensely personal and learned book shows us how time reverberates with story and stars, friable rock and flawed flesh.”

—Christopher Cokinos, author of Still as Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moonfrom Antiquity to Tomorrow

  “No one thinks more deeply about the very deep Grand Canyon than scholar and explorer Don Lago. In this generous, often spiritual journey, his intimate connections to place become our own.”

—Rebecca Lawton, fluvial geologist, former Grand Canyon river guide, and author of The Oasis This Time: Living and Dying with Water in the West

“In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau and his collection of meditations compiled in Walden, Don Lago explores our human existence through experiences with one of nature’s most stunning masterpieces, the Grand Canyon. Lago links the very fabric of humanity to stories of the Canyon’s water below, heavens above, and rocks within, using the Canyon as a portal to understand our place in the universe. This is nature writing at its best!”

—Kevin Schindler, historian and author of Past and Present: Grand Canyon

   “Reading Lago’s book feels like journeying into the canyon itself, becoming lost within its myriad side canyons and savoring encounters with tiny flowering cacti and vistas of land, water, and sky. If the canyon could write its own autobiography, it would look like Canyon and Cosmos. This work is a special contribution to the tradition of Grand Canyon literature.”

—Scott Slovic, senior scientist, Oregon Research Institute, and coeditor of Nature and Literary Studies

• A deep immersion in one of the world’s most famous natural wonders

• A unique exploration of the meanings of human life

• This book roams through the worlds of human mythology and Native American spirituality

• A unique blending of physical and intellectual adventure