The Secret to Enjoying Every Detail in Grand Canyon

How a Legendary Dory Guide Changed the Way I See the Canyon

“I’m going to ask you an impossible question,” I said when I finally mustered the courage. I had been sitting near Cindell “Dellie” Dale in the chair circle for a half hour, thinking about asking. It was night two of our Grand Canyon trip. Despite her warmth, I was sufficiently intimidated to be talking to the legend. I arrived at Lee’s Ferry with inherited knowledge of her barrier-breaking start on the river and her continued legacy. I was eager to learn from her. I had been watching her lines and listening to her talk about the river and taking notes.

She pulled out her personal library at camp. Scattered on a tarp in the center of the circle; each book weathered and loved and a little bit waterlogged. Earlier I had flipped through a thick book of Grand Canyon film photographs. I stumbled upon a 3 shot frame of her heroically rowing a dory through Hermit Rapid. She was standing, hip-checking her near vertical boat as it crested a roiling wave. The photo was from early in her long career. She began working for Grand Canyon Dories in 1983 as an assistant cook before becoming one of the first female dory guides. On this trip, she was nearing her 150th trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon. She was a wealth of knowledge and experience. I wanted to soak it all up.

“What’s your favorite place in the canyon?” The words tumbled out of me. She inhaled sharply. A beat passed. I waited in anticipation. Her brow furrowed and she slowly exhaled. 

“I can’t answer that.” My heart skipped a beat. “I don’t have a favorite place in the canyon.” She let her statement hang in the air for a minute, teasing us all, before concluding, “I have a favorite place each day.”

I leaned closer. I did not want to miss a word. “Okay?” I prompted, desperate to know. Guests around the chair circle were leaning in now, too. 

“What’s your favorite part of tomorrow?” Chris asked from clear across the circle. Tomorrow was a jam-packed day, and I was trying to anticipate what she would say. Would she love the yawning Redwall Cavern? The fine nautilus fossils? What about the easy-to-miss, but impressive natural bridge at mile 36? 

“Tomorrow,” she conducted our attention like we were her symphony. “Across from Shinimu Wash, along the wall, there are these little pockets in the rock. They look like ice cream scoops. Like hundreds of little spoonfuls of rock have been scooped out along the wall, and you go speeding past, and …that’s my favorite part of tomorrow.” She clapped her hands and spun, leaving us all agape as she headed down to the kitchen.

I was struck by the simplicity. The intimacy. 

Everyone remembers stopping at Redwall Cavern. It vividly asks visitors to imagine an ancient behemoth of a river eroding the cavern. You feel tiny. You can’t not remember floating past Vasey’s Paradise. The cascading greenery erupts, along with a spring, straight from the rock wall. You can’t not marvel. The petroglyphs at South Canyon, you can’t not be awed. Yet, on a day full of locations like these labeled “point of interest” on my map, Dellie identified something no map had labeled. She identified a tiny portion of a massive wall next to a single rapid. In other words, she picked a piece of rock in a canyon full of rocks. 

I shoved off the beach into the current the next morning with the rock wall in mind. Just a few bends away, I sailed past the ice cream scoops. They were surreal. And I wondered why they had formed there and nowhere else. I wondered, too, if it would be my favorite part of the day.

Would it be something else I noticed? Like that thick band of variegated rock? Or the cluster of tiny wildflowers growing from an even smaller crack? What about the tunneled and smooth flutes of rock I spied in an eddy near South Canyon? I gasped at all the small details. Will this be my favorite? I wondered again and again. But then I’d spot something new, and cross-check it with what I saw earlier in the day. The wonder stacked upon itself delightfully.

I realized with certainty that I would not know for a very long time. I would not know until I visited many more times. How else could you build such knowledge of a space? 

The next day, I asked Dellie again. A few days later, I asked again. There was a specific rock shelf in the Gems. There was the downstream view after Upset Rapid. Soon, she started to tell us when she briefed us for the upcoming days.  “We’ll stop at Blacktail, listen to some music, float on, run Fossil. My favorite rapid, and Jasmine,” she’d turn to find me sitting in the chair circle, or washing dishes, “my favorite part of the day.” 

Thanks to Dellie, I found myself engaging with the canyon in a new way because of this. Instead of waiting eagerly to arrive at the next labeled spot on my map, I felt motivated to notice as much about each unnamed bend, each unlabeled marvel. 

I tried each day to find and appreciate Dellie’s favorite spot. Sometimes I would miss it, but these misses weren’t disappointments—they were invitations to return. To see this place again. To know it more deeply.

Because with just as much certainty as Dellie had named her daily favorites, I realized I wanted to know the pieces of this place that would feel, each day, like coming home. I hope we should all be so lucky.