grand

The Grand Canyon is well named.  It has a grandeur that I think people are ill equipped to process.  One feels as numbed as awed.  The mind searches for something to focus on - the geological processes, some particular tree or stone, the scale of time.  But to look at the thing is partly to feel the chasm without cut a chasm within.  It is a silencing, as well as silent.  It is less a place, more a space, almost a void, although the beauty of the stone saves it from quite being that.