It’s not often that one truly feels their relative insignificance; most people are blissfully unaware of the vast nothingness that surrounds our spherical world. When you realize it, if you do at all, it tends to reach your mind at the most spontaneous moments. In my travels, it has hit me on those precipices and peninsulas that seem to hang out over the world. It’s not when I looked down, though: it was when I looked up to the horizon in front of me and the sky above, where both extended into a seemingly infinite expanse.

Once I took my first steps outside of the Las Vegas airport, crowded with slot machines, stores, and visitors, the heat was like an unknown relative’s embrace: completely unwarranted and quite unpleasant. After entering into a silver frame that purred as the ignition was fired, my family’s journey could begin. Hours of travel soon began, with randomly shaped red rock formations popping out of the formless sand with no discernible rhythm or pattern. I wasn’t used to being able to see the horizon fade away; in New York, there had always been trees, buildings, or a combination of the two to block your vision from reaching its limit. The gem of this expedition, which sounded to me to be equivalent to the landscape we had passed so far, albeit going into the ground instead of above it, had not been reached.

The Grand Canyon Lodge, as its name implied, was located on the edge of the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. Coming close to the Grand Canyon yielded a welcome change of scenery, transitioning from the stark desert to a softer and more familiar forest. Pine trees filled this area near the canyon, and the ground was undeniable evidence to this. After going through the lobby, the opposite side of the Lodge from where we entered introduced us to the place where months of planning and hours of travel had culminated to bring us: the Grand Canyon itself.

The Lodge seemed to be sequestered on its own peninsula that jutted out into the Grand Canyon. We took the opportunity to take a walk along its perimeter and check out the place we’d all wanted to see. Unfortunately, our curiosity and boundless excitement was tempered by the fact that vegetation crowded much of the path that ran along the edge of the canyon, and a voyage through it would most likely retaliate with scratches, bumps, and a fruitless venture due to the thickness of the shrubs and greenery. Our patience soon bore fruit, as an opening appeared a half hour through our exploration into an unobstructed view. The Grand Canyon seemed to be exactly what I expected from the view that we got, but a rocky outcropping that stuck out like a sore thumb beckoned to me to prove my mind otherwise. Much to the chagrin of my mother, I went out to it, taking measured steps down the slope and climbing up to the top of the stone. My eyes and mind were subsequently rewarded with a view of the Grand Canyon I hadn’t expected to see outside of a picture.

It was breathtaking. The inside of the canyon was covered in trees and shrubbery, though not quite so thick to where you couldn’t see the bottom. It was rock, as expected, but there were animals that lived down there, evidenced by the movement of leaves. As I looked up, the stratification of rock was clearly visible, varying between shades and tints of white, yellow, orange, and red. The horizon stretched as far as I could see into the distance, fading away due to my eyes’ incompetence.

This was my moment: the time when I thought about how much we truly meant to the world, and everything else out there. This was just such a fundamentally different scene than I was ever used to seeing, and it made me realize that there were people all over the globe leading extremely similar lives to me (and completely different ones, too) in a medium that would never compare to mine; not due to its quality, but the disparity between them. What could one person’s actions possibly do to utterly change something significant, something that others would know and remember you by? Who would make a conscious effort to remember your name for something other than ancestral documentation? With our world revolving incessantly with eight other planets, and millions of other stars with planets orbiting them just the same, which of your actions would truly matter in the end?

Stepping off of that rock took more mental effort than anything else, simply because I had to vault over this existential hurdle to be able to return to myself. It was too mind-boggling to put thought into it; the best I could do was continue on with my life and let thoughts like that become nothing more than a passerby. I stepped off of that particular rock a changed man, but only to myself. No one would ever know what had transpired on that particular rock but me, and now, you.