Footprints Left Behind
Did you ever wonder why people carve their names or initials on tree trunks, benches, and other objects? And did you notice that more significant places often have more of those markings?
That strong desire to make a statement “I was here!” is as old as the human race—a desire to make and leave behind some sort of sign, a “footprint” of existence.
The mysterious markings and images pecked or painted on cliffs and boulders in the West, known as the pictographs, are messages from the past. Similarly, the boot print of the Apollo 11 crew member and the American flag left behind on the moon in 1969 are our message to the future stating, “We were here.”
I probably would not have thought about this at all if I had not found an almost forgotten photograph of my footprints, or rather boot prints, from several years ago. I was sorting through piles of my photographs in preparation for the recent art exhibit and there it was—the photograph of my boot prints in the Grand Canyon! And there also was another photo showing the boot prints of my Canadian friend, Joan, with whom I had undertaken the challenge of hiking that incredible canyon – down and up in one day!
These footprints in the dust of the trail were a short lived statement of my presence there. Short lived, but definitely a bit longer than the bare footprints I make at the edge of the ocean each time I walk on the wet sand of Silver Beach when I am on Cape Cod. There the very next wave smooths out the footprints and the following one makes them disappear totally. I never had an impulse to take a picture of my footprints there— maybe because that beach is so familiar to me. Similarly, I did not have that desire on any mountain hikes around Tucson, even though the mountains here are very beautiful.
Just being at the Grand Canyon evokes an unforgettable feeling of awe and humbleness, but hiking it, measuring myself against its giant scale of space and time is indescribable. That’s right—the magnificence and hugeness of the Grand Canyon was so overwhelming and the sense of my minuteness there against the background of the rocks formed through the millennia of time, made me feel like shouting, “I am here! I am really here!” Hence the footprint photo and many other photos that captured that adventure.
Now these photos seem flat and very one dimensional, and can’t adequately illustrate the beauty and power of that place. Still, I will share a few of them with you. If you haven’t been there, I hope that you do go—after all it is one of the wonders of the world, and was not man-made, but created by nature over millions of years!
My boot prints in the Grand Canyon disappeared almost immediately while the boot prints on the moon probably remain unchanged. There are no winds on the moon to erode them, so they might be there forever.
Here on Earth our physical presence is fragile and temporary, but we humans are clever and capable of making different, more permanent “footprints” to mark our short time of existence. No one wants to be forgotten or insignificant. So we often strive in a variety of ways to make “footprints” of our lives. One way is through creative work: writing, painting, composing…. As a result we create books, paintings, records, and photographs that can live on after we are gone.
I was reminded of this just a few days ago. Lou Colombo, a jazz musician whom I knew from Cape Cod and whose trumpet playing I love, died last Saturday in a car accident. That was terribly upsetting. However, his music will stay with us. I know it will stay with me.
Click on Lou’s picture below and listen to his musical “footprint” titled “It all depends on you.”
That is right, it all depends on you….
P.S. To learn more about Lou Colombo click to read Cape jazz legend Lou Colombo dies in the Cape Cod Times.
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Boot print on the moon photo from NASA. Alicja’s photo by Joan Agnew. Lou Colombo photo by Ron Schloerb/Cape Cod Times. Text and other photos copyright © 2012 by Alicja Mann.
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This entry was posted on March 8, 2012 at 1:18 PM and is filed under Arizona, Essays, Feelings, Kudos, Memories, Photo essays, Photo stories, Places, Thoughts, Travels. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Apollo 11, Arizona, boot prints, bridges, Bright Angel trail, footprints, Grand Canyon, Hiking Grand Canyon, Lou Colombo, music, pictographs, South Kaibab trail, trumpeter
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March 8, 2012 at 2:42 PM
Footprints — lovely metaphor — and lovely photos! Thank you…
March 18, 2012 at 5:24 PM
Oh Marge, it is always great to hear from you! Thank you, and sorry to be so late in responding.
Alicja
March 8, 2012 at 2:47 PM
Hey, Alicja — that’s a great piece of work: you, the Grand Canyon, and Lou’s horn.
A particularly fine piece of writing. A nice footprint.
–Bill
March 18, 2012 at 5:16 PM
Hello Bill.
I am sorry to be late in responding to your comment. Your words mean a lot to me. – Thank you!
I was away for a few days from Tucson, my desk, and… the Internet. At times it is nice to be detached from that media!
Speaking about footprints – you preserved your “Granddaddy’s Baer’s” – William Jacob Baer’s – footprints so beautifully in the form of your book! I am proud of having one of them. Thank you again – Alicja
March 8, 2012 at 9:16 PM
Alicja,
Reminds me of the footprint Mid left, her Memories…
Valerie
March 18, 2012 at 5:27 PM
Oh yes, Valerie! Indeed, Mid left her footprints and… we are supposed to preserve them.
I imagine how busy you are now, but when you are ready, please get in touch.
Alicja
March 9, 2012 at 6:21 AM
Beautiful insights Alicja…and a reminder of the impact of others “footprints” have upon us personally…perhaps a kind word, gentle touch. Ah life…the journey is the destination.
March 18, 2012 at 5:30 PM
Hello Vince,
Thank you for your comment and sorry for responding so late.
You are absolutely right – there are so many forms of “footprints” around us!
March 9, 2012 at 3:28 PM
Every day I look at the Grand Canyon through one of Alicja’s beautiful photos from that day of the footprint. Thank you Alicja.
March 18, 2012 at 5:36 PM
Dear Pam,
I am so happy to hear that you still have one of my photos from the Grand Canyon!
Thank you for following my blog, I really appreciate that and I like the feeling of your presence, even though there is a huge distance between Tucson and North Falmouth.
Love to all of you and see you this summer!
Alicja
March 28, 2012 at 7:15 PM
Thanks for those beautiful photos of the Grand Canyon. I can’t believe I’ve been living in AZ for nearly twenty years now, and haven’t gone there myself. So the vicarious version is a real treat
The theme of “footprints in the sands of time” reminds me of something Gandhi said — no, actually, he didn’t, but he ought to have said: “One small step by one person can be a giant step for all human kind, or alll kind humans…
June 6, 2012 at 12:12 PM
[…] Sometimes they live a lonely life, like the tree I met on the Kaibab Trail while hiking the Grand Canyon. […]
December 12, 2013 at 11:25 AM
[…] I wrote about that hike in my post Footprints Left Behind https://alicjamann.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/footprints-left-behind/ […]